The Heavens Shall Tremble
by Full-Paragon
Summary: It has been seven years since the galaxy burned. Seven years of tenuous peace, while humanity and its allies rebuilt and the races of the Citadel purged their ranks of Indoctrinated. The galaxy hovers on the edge of a knife, as people who lost loved ones once again cry for war. On the edge of the Terminus systems, darkness stirs. Ancient beings have awoken. It is Harvest time.
1. Prologue

_The earth shall quake before them; __**the heavens shall tremble**__: the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining:_

_- Joel 2:10, Christian Bible_

_**Prologue**_

_**Constant, Eden Prime - Zaeed Massani**_

_**March 15th, 2183**_

Sighing, Zaeed Massani popped the top of his pint of Emu Bitter and relaxed in the early morning sun. It was winter now, so the fields were lying fallow, but temperature was still pleasant here near the equator of Eden Prime. It wasn't a half bad name for the planet Zaeed mused. Out of all the worlds humanity and the races of the Independent League had colonized, Eden Prime was renowned as one of the most pleasant to live on. Which was why Zaeed had chosen it to settle on after his retirement from the League Marine Corps six years ago. Well, that and the planets distance from Citadel Council Space. When war inevitably came again, Zaeed intended to be well out of it.

"You're drinking early."

Cracking open his one good eye, the other having been lost when a turian had put a mass accelerator round in Zaeed's head during the Second Contact War, Zaeed glared up at the face that was blocking his light. Four eyes stared expressionlessly at him from a mottled greenish-yellow face, with four nostrils and a prominent head ridge, below which dull purple lips were pressed into a thin line.

"So what if I goddamn am, Crelli? Man's got a right to relax when the harvest's in. You should be too. Go bother the Ylorres girl to play in the hills or something, maybe go see what's up at the dig site. You're seventeen, go be a bosh'tet while you're mother and I are still here to bail you out."

Crelli's head tilted ever so slightly to the left, her face still blank. The lack of expression irked Zaeed, as it always did. His adoptive daughter was always so serious, not like he'd been growing up. Though even in the slums of Sydney, things hadn't been as bad for him growing up as they'd been for Crelli. Growing up in Reaper territory did that to a person.

"We should be training. The news reports say that there was another skirmish along the turian border. And the killed could come back at any time," Crelli stated after a moment's pause.

Groaning, Zaeed set his drink down and sat up on his lawn chair, motioning for Crelli to sit beside him. "Look kid, the Reapers are gone. We towed that monstrosity into a goddamn star. They've cleaned out most of the killed in the Kites Nest, even if Balak and a few of his ships did slip away. The fleet's in orbit, and Commander Williams and her garrison are just down the hill. No goddamn Reapers are gonna drop out of the sky. We can relax, it's safe here."

"Mother told me that nowhere is ever safe."

Zaeed rubbed the dead right side of the face, massaging the reconstructed tissue. As good as League medicine was, they'd never been able to fully restore feeling there, and it always tingled when he touched it. "Kid, that was on Aratoht, where the Indoctrinated beacons were everywhere and everyone was killed and trying to kill you or worse. This is Eden Prime, in the heart of League space! We've been here for five years now. Have you ever seen anything more dangerous than a gas bag in all that time?"

It was a conversation Zaeed and Crelli had repeated a thousand times if they'd had it once. The girl had seen her planet burn, as Warlord Jak and her krogan warriors extracted the five hundred odd survivors from a system that had once had over 300,000 inhabitants. The batarians had been abused all across the Kite's Nest, but the Bahak System had been where the Leviathan of Dis had been, and where the poison that had eventually engulfed the galaxy in the First Pan-Galactic war had originated.

Zaeed was an old campaigner, who'd visited death on the League's foes on scores of planets, but he had the most nightmares about what had happened on Aratoht. Even the turian occupation of Shanxi during the Second Contact War paled in comparison to the horrors Zaeed had witnessed on Aratoht. Children marching silently into battle, eyes dead as they were mowed down by krogan warriors and N7 operatives. Mothers strapping bombs to their babies at the behest of their Reaper masters. Black stone pillars that seemed to suck the light out of the air, and caused dark whispers in the back of your mind. It wasn't something a man could forget, and Zaeed had been on Aratoht for only a week. Crelli had spent eleven years in that hell.

Instead of answering, Crelli pulled out her Predator heavy pistol ejected and reinserted its metal clip several times. It had been Zaeed's while he was an N7, and he'd given it to her shortly after they'd left the Bahak system. Most girls slept with stuffed animals or crap like that. Crelli slept with a gun, and was never parted from it.

Struggling with what to say to his daughter, Zaeed stayed silent, putting an arm around her shoulders. He'd known he was going to have to be a father to her when he'd married her mother, but Zaeed had never felt very skilled at parenting. His own father had beat him regularly until he'd run off to enlist in the then Systems Alliance military, back when humanity had been alone in the galaxy. That felt like several lifetimes ago, though it was only been 30 years.

"Husband, you have visitors," a familiar voice called from the homestead.

Zaeed turned and smiled at his wife, grateful for the interruption. Hevesh looked like an older version of Crelli in many ways, with a face that was frequently as inexpressive. Zaeed had married her less than six months after Aratoht, right after he'd officially retired. He supposed it hadn't really been love that had motivated their union, not in the traditional sense anyway. Really, what they'd both wanted was companionship. Someone to be there when the night terrors came, to hold onto when they relived all the deaths they'd seen or all the lives they'd taken. It had worked out though, and Zaeed and come to love his batarian wife, even if he did wish she'd be a bit more emotive at times.

"Who's here?" Zaeed asked, standing and taking a swig of his beer. He needed it; if he was going to be doing this much thinking this early in the morning, he was going to need to be doing it drunk, visitors or no.

A massive shadow filled the doorway behind Hevesh. "Just a couple of strangers," a deep, rumbling voice growled. The speaker stepped forward to reveal a hunchbacked alien that stood over two meters tall. Wide set dark green eyes glared out from underneath a heavy brow of bone and sinew, which crested in a dark brown plate of thick bone. A stubby tail poked out from behind massive legs that ended in three sharp talons. The arms looked too short for such a massive body, stumpy, muscular things that ended in claws that were clutching a covered plate of hot wings.

"We were in the neighborhood, and thought we'd stop by," another voice said, this one high and lilting with a sing-song quality. Another alien stepped out from behind the krogan with the hot wings. This one was more human looking, though her skin was slate grey and her legs faced backwards. Her hair was lavender, and hung loosely about her shoulders. Like most quarians, she wore dark sunglasses to shield her glowing nocturnal eyes from the daytime sun, and in her three fingered hands she held up a two bags from the local market. "We brought food, if I remember right you and Leerg can't seem to go more than an hour without killing something or eating."

Grinning broadly, Zaeed hurried forward to usher his guests out into the yard. "Goddamn, it's Jorgal Leerg and Oro'Veskar. What are a couple of bosh'tets like you doing all the way out here? I thought you'd settled down back on Earth Oro, and last I heard you were still deployed in the Kite's Nest, Leerg."

"I'm here on a mating contract," Leerg rumbled, handing the plate of wings to Crelli, who dutifully took them over to a table beneath the shade of a large snaketree. "Oro heard I was going to be in the area, and decided it was time we got the old gang back together."

"It's been too long since we've seen you and your blushing bride. Crelli, you've grown quite a bit since I last saw you," Oro remarked pleasantly. Though she didn't look it in her sun dress and sandals, Zaeed knew that Oro'Veskar had been the deadliest sniper in the N7 corps, and still had more confirmed kills credited to her name than any other sentient in the short history of the League.

"I have," Crelli deadpanned.

"Talkative as always," Leerg remarked, pulling off the lid of the hot wings and tossing a handful of them into his mouth, bones and all. Krogan were not picky eaters, and had a robust digestive system that laughed at puny things like chicken bones. Large flat teeth crushed the wings to splinters in a heartbeat. Teeth that Zaeed had seen crush an asari or salarian neck just as easily as the wings.

"My daughter knows her manners well," Hevesh stated, pouring cups of wine from the box for the friends as they seated themselves around the table, save for Oro. Quarians were dextro-amino based instead of levo-amino based like the other League species. The only other known species that was dextro based were the turians, the most militant of the Citadel Council's races. It was rare indeed for a turian and quarian to willingly sup together, ever since the quarians had been banished from their homeworld long ago.

"We're just a bunch of refugees, ain't we," Zaeed reflected as they ate. "Humans, we were the new kids on the block, a bunch of wimps ready to be crushed by the Council and ordered about like every other race before us." 

Oro nodded, setting her cup down. "I suppose. We quarians had been wandering lost and alone, ever since the geth rebelled and took Rannoch from us. We wandered for 300 years without friends, until 314."

Originally a Citadel species, the quarians had been evicted from their homeworld of Rannoch by a race of sentient machines they had created, known as the geth. The geth had achieved sentience by accident, but according to Citadel Law such synthetic intelligence was grounds for extermination of the creator race. The quarians had tried to destroy the geth before the Council found out, but they had failed. The geth had managed to overthrow the quarian homeworld of Rannoch, and all the quarian colonies. Forced to flee, the quarians had begged for aid from the Citadel, but instead they were exiled as an example of what happened to those that dabbled with AI.

Relay 314 had been where humanity had met their first alien species, a Mass Relay that allowed travel between distant stars, left behind by the ancient protheans, who had vanished from the galaxy 50,000 years ago, according to some. The Belari, a quarian patrol boat captained by Rael'Zorah, had come upon then Rear Admiral Steven Hackett's task group, and made friendly first contact. For a few days, things had gone well, and both races had rejoiced to find a friend among the stars.

And then the turians had come. The Citadel Council was the ruling body of most of the galaxy, and it had then dictated the lives of half a dozen minor species, though only the turians, the salarians and the asari had any say in how the Council was run. The turians were the enforcers of the Council's will, and at that point they had been the uncontested strongest race in the galaxy. They had scattered Hackett's fleet, but the Belari had sacrificed herself to save her captain, who was onboard Hackett's flagship for negotiations, and a human child named John Shepard. Ultimately the turians had been driven off by reinforcements from both the humans and the quarians, and after a short, bitter struggle, the turians and the Citadel Council had recognized humanity and the quarians as a sovereign power.

However, instead of joining the Citadel as had been expected, humanity had invited the quarian people to share their worlds and both had declared themselves to be a new political power, the Independent League, unaffiliated with the Citadel.

"And the krogan were dying. If it hadn't been for Urdnot Wrex and his alliance with the League, I'd probably still be selling my gun for credits to the highest bidder," Jorgal Leerg added. "The League changed all that. We can have children again. No more mountains of stillborn infants from the Genophage the salarians gave us. I've got over 200 healthy young myself from twenty mating contracts. Being an N7 has its benefits."

Oro snorted. "If my husband was half as philandering, by now I'd be dead from a dozen infections. Four children are more than enough for me."

"You are having another?" Hevesh asked.

Oro smiled and nodded. "There still are not enough quarians. We're not in danger of extinction anymore, but some days I wish we could reproduce like the krogan."

"I fear for my own people these days," Hevesh admitted. "Too many killed, too many worlds burned. And now we are divided. Half are in the League, and the other half the Citadel. Those still held by the Citadel have no rights, they are little better than they were as plebs or slaves when the overseers ruled us. We should free them."

"That would mean starting a war," Leerg growled. "You think we're ready for that?"

"There was another skirmish with the turians on the newscast," Crelli stated, startling the adults. She was so quiet, it was often easy to forget she was there.

"War is coming, and soon. I pray my children grow up in a time of peace, but the Citadel is relentless. They will not rest until we are under their heel," Oro spat.

Zaeed took another long drink, then stared into his empty glass. "Makes a man glad he's retired. The war should pass us by here. I'm too goddamn old for that shit again."

"The krogan stand ready. The Citadel will not find us wanting. You fought in two wars old friend. Not bad for a species that lives as short a time as humans," Leerg mused.

Krogan lived a long time. Leerg was relatively young by his species standards at two centuries. Krogan matured faster than humans, quarians or batarians, but thanks to their multitude of redundant organs, rapid cellular regeneration, and a level of telomeranse repair that surpassed even the asari, they could live for centuries. There were no known cases of a krogan dying of old age; they were a fierce species that made their home on hard worlds. The oldest known krogan was Jorgal Shaman, a distant relative of Leerg's, who was over 1600 years old. Old enough that he remembered when the krogan had been part of the Citadel, and had saved the asari and salarians from the rachni.

The krogan had been living in a self-made nuclear winter until the salarians uplifted them to serve as soldiers against the insectile rachni. Ultimately the krogan had triumphed, but while the salarians and asari had taught the krogan how to fight with weapons far beyond anything they could have made alone, they never taught the krogan how to live with such power. Shortly after the Rachni War had ended, the Krogan Rebellions had begun. If it had not been for the intervention of the turians, relative newcomers on the galactic stage at the time, humanity might very well have found a galaxy ruled by krogan warlords instead of the Citadel Council. As it was, the turians had forced the krogan down by infecting them with a plague known as the genophage, which had meant only 1 in 1000 krogan births could be carried to term. The krogan were long lived and fertile, but they could not replenish their numbers faster than krogan were killed. Extinction had been less than a century off before they had allied with the League and the Genophage had been cured.

Glancing over at his daughter, Zaeed frowned, his face turning into a ghastly mask thanks to his dead tissue. "It's not me I'm worried about anymore," he muttered to Leerg. "I've got a family now. Crelli's seventeen. She can enlist now. Hell, she would if her mother and I hadn't convinced her we need her here on the farm. She's still in the militia, with Commander Williams and her garrison. She spends more time training with them than anything else. Christ, I was an N7, I don't remember being this obsessed with war when I was a kid."

"That's because you didn't grow up where war was a constant. Where other species threatened to kill you and your kin. Young humans are much the same as Crelli these days. Oro and I saw enough of them when were instructors at N school. They want blood as much as she does."

Before Zaeed could reply, his omnitool blared a warning. He glanced around and saw that everyone's omnitools were buzzing, and activated the holographic display of the little computer chip embedded in his arm that acted as multipurpose electronic aid. On the screen were four words that made Zaeed's blood run cold.

INVASION IMMINENT. CODE: MORNING.

In the distance, the colony's sirens began to wail. There was a sound like thunder, and Zaeed swore, grabbing his daughter and wife and running for the homestead. He'd been in enough hostile LZs to recognize the sound of discharging drive cores and ships entered the atmosphere. Above him, dark shapes began to descend on the colony, insect like shadows that dove for the ground as the anti-air defenses of the colony activated.

"The armory is inside, this way!" Zaeed shouted, and glanced up as the geth ships began to descend on the colony amidst red lightning.

**Prothean Digsite, Eden Prime - Lieutenant Commander Ashley Williams**

"How the hell did these things sneak up on us?" Ash growled as her ground car bounced along the dirt road towards the prothean beacon that had been uncovered only hours earlier. She'd been on her way back in from inspection, ensuring that everything was ready for the retrieval team. There had been rumors of a turian skulking about the secure site, and Ash wanted all her men on alert. She'd thought they were ready for anything. Now, she knew better.

"Must have come in ballistic ma'am," Gunnery Chief Kal'Reegar answered, his voice calm. The quarian marine kept his eyes on the road, his eyes glowing from behind his helmet's faceplate.

Ash nodded in exasperation. That was the obvious answer, but still, why hadn't the League had warning? The fleet in orbit around Eden Prime wasn't especially large, but it should have at least slowed the enemy down. There had been no warning from them though, and Ash feared the Eden Prime navy was no more.

There was no warning when the mass accelerator round hit the road near Ash's jeep, and if Reegar hadn't swerved around a pothole, it would have destroyed the car. As it was, they just spun out of control and flipped. The marines armor and Reegar's reflexes spared them anything beyond bruises, but Ash and Reegar left the ground car behind.

"Reegar, point your helmet cam and me and broadcast on a priority band. We need to get word of this out!" Ash ordered as she raised her helmets visor.

"Recording, ma'am," Reegar stated, turning his face toward Ash.

"This is Lieutenant Commander Ashley Williams of the 2nd Frontier Division, Fourth Company. We are under attack! I repeat, we are-" another explosion flung Ash to the ground. She looked up to see the smoking ruins of her command. She scrambled back to her feet, tapping Reegar on the shoulder. He was blazing at away at a distant geth ship, but stopped and turned back towards Ash. "This is Code Delta, they're after the Macguffin! We can't hold them off for long! Send reinforcements!" She paused, glancing up at the sky as more geth ships descended from on high. "God help us all."

_**The Temple of Athame, Thessia - Lieutenant Kurin T'nagi**_

_**March 15th, 2183**_

It was going to be another beautiful day on Thessia, Lieutenant Kurin observed grumpily. She stifled a yawn, watery eyes gazing blearily at the sunrise. This was always the worst shift to have. The one that started in the small hours of the morning, and dragged on all demon taken day. Oh well. At least she was off in a few more hours. Then it was time to grab a few bites to eat and then stumble off to bed. Such was the life of an asari commando.

Sorry, asari SOLDIER. That had been a recent change, at least to someone who was 200 years old. It hadn't been until the last six years, after the First-Pan Galactic War, that the asari had started to keep a standing army. No longer were huntress packs of commandos the only fighting force the asari fielded. Now they had cohesive fighting units with a standing army hundreds of thousands strong, with more in reserves. They even had turian drill instructors, though not even the turians could instill a significant level of discipline and professional bearing upon their charges. Which was why Kurin was slumping at her post instead of standing at attention.

The blue skinned natives of Thessia were not traditionally soldiers. They'd never had the need before. The mono-gendered asari race looked like blue female humans, save for the tentacles on their heads. Traditionally asari solved problems via diplomacy or seduction, or application of concentrated biotic force. Generated by element zero, a particle that gains mass when exposed to a positive charge or a negative mass when exposed to a negative charge, biotics allowed an individual to create a mass effect field by running positive or negative charge through pockets of eezo in their nervous systems. All asari possessed biotics to one degree or another, which they used to reproduce with any other species via a strange sort of parthenogenesis. Their biotics allowed them to "scan" the neural patterns of another species by sending electrical impulses through the skin. They then used the scan to randomize part of a gamete's DNA, creating a child without actual genetic material from another.

Kurin glanced around at the other temple guards, all at various states of sleepiness. They were alert enough she guessed, but the only people who came to the temple these days were justicars and scientists. Even the most dedicated scientist wasn't going to show up right at the crack of dawn. Not on Athameday, the traditional weekly day of rest. Still, the temple did have to be guarded. It held quite a few prothean relics, including a recently uncovered prothean beacon.

A few years back, the traitorous Doctor Liara T'soni, the so-called Voice of Truth, had stolen a prothean AI from the statue of Athame and run off. It had been SNAFU in every sense, though Kurin supposed that at least T'soni and the AI had managed to reveal that Indoctrinated agents had been responsible for the start of the war, not the League or Citadel Council as everyone had thought. T'soni hoped to bring a lasting unity and peace, to unite the Council and League against the Reapers that were sure to descend upon the galaxy at any moment.

Except now, it was six years later, and no one had heard a peep from the Reapers the entire time. At first, Kurin and many other asari had flocked to recruiting stations, eager to defend Thessia from more traitors and save the asari people from the Reapers. Except no Reapers ever showed up. And the menace of the barbarians and primitives that made up the League was ever present. Kurin snarled silently at the thought. Humans, quarians, krogan, and now turncoat batarians. Thirty years ago, if someone had told Kurin that a primitive race that had just ascended to the stars, homeless suit-rats in their garbage heap refugee fleet, the neutered krogan, and the hopelessly backwards and conservative batarians would be the biggest threat to galactic peace since the founding of the Citadel Council, Kurin would have laughed in their face.

Things had changed. Humanity had made first contact with the quarians at relay 314 twenty six years ago. Now, the quarians were no longer homeless, having taken up residence on human colonies. They'd fought the turian navy, the most powerful military in the galaxy, to a standstill. Peace had been made, and the asari had attempted to bring humanity into the galactic community peacefully. Except that humanity had responded to their olive branch by collaborating with its suit-rat allies to steal the envoy ship and kidnap the asari ambassador and her aides. That had just been the first of many times the newly minted Independent League had spit in the face of the Council had showed that the League considered violence to be their best option.

At first, everyone had thought the League could be contained. True, they had a fairly significant population base and a tech level that was advancing with disturbing rapidity, but they were just a small portion of the galaxy. It would take hundreds of years before they could have the population and economy to take on the Citadel, and by then they would be tamed and absorbed. But then the krogan had joined. A few short years later, the Genophage, the only thing keeping krogan numbers from exploding exponentially and reigniting a thousand year old conflict that had once brought the Citadel to its knees, had been cured. Now the krogan were rapidly multiplying. Just a few short years ago, the first new generation of krogan had reached maturity. They had promptly taken up arms.

Which was why there was now a standing asari army and why the asari navy was rapidly expanding to levels previously forbidden by treaty. The once peaceful daughters of Thessia were preparing for the war everyone knew was coming. The Second Pan-Galactic War, the war that would decide once and for all who would inherit the galaxy.

A war, Kurin realized as alarms began to wail and tactical reports appeared on omnitools, that appeared to be arriving.

"Move, move, move!" Kurin shouted, getting her troops into their hardened bunkers. She swore foully as she glanced at her HUD. The enemy had broken through the Thessian inner defenses already, having somehow bypassed the outer fortifications around the Mass Relay and around the locus where League ships using their own relays were projected to appear. The make of the ships was unknown, and their weapons and armor was scything through everything before them.

"And I only had three more hours on duty," Kurin grumbled to herself, her earlier boredom gone in a rush of adrenaline.

In a few minutes, the first ship burst through the atmosphere, wreathed in darkness and lighting as its drive core discharged. They were obviously not League ships, with hulls that appeared to have been carved from asteroids and shaped like massive cones. There were dozens of the ships that Kurin could see, and she swallowed nervously.

"Target the lead ship with our AA guns!" she bellowed, and for a brief moment, she hoped that the ships might be driven off as the temples hidden defenses activated and sent streams of molten death at the enemy ships.

The Thranx rounds impacted harmlessly on kinetic barriers, and GARDIAN lasers on the asteroid ships replied, quickly charring the temples defenses into ash. It was up to Kurin and her soldiers now. Black clouds of something Kurin didn't recognize spewed from the vessels, and Kurin ordered her soldiers to seal their hardsuits. It was probably some form of biological warfare.

A few moments later, the bugs appeared. They were tiny and insidious, swarming the asari in great clouds. Mass accelerator guns were useless against them, the rounds were just too small. Using small eezo cores, mass accelerators fired bits of metal the size of grains of sand, reduced to negative mass and then accelerated to near relativistic speeds, impacting with more penetration power and force than any bullet ever fired with chemical propellants. Against asari sized foes they were deadly, but they were useless against insects. Thankfully, biotics were not. Using the trace amounts of element zero in their systems, the asari defenders were able to hurl destructive orbs of energy into the clouds of their foes. Someone dragged out a flamethrower from Goddess knew where, and hosed down the swarm. Kurin and her command were keeping the bugs at bay, for now.

Hope proved to be short lived as black, buzzing shapes began to descend from the skies. Kurin swallowed, glancing up at the raging heavens as more AA defenses from around the city attempted to bring down the enemy ships and great scars of destruction were carved by the ships cannons as they fired streams of molten metal. This day, the heavens above Thessia raged and trembled. Kurin prayed they would be able to weather the coming storm, and readied her rifle.

_**Authors Note: **_

_**Thanks for reading the first chapter in "The Heaven's Shall Tremble" book two in the Heirs of the Galaxy trilogy. If you haven't read book one, And the Meek Shall Inherit the Galaxy, don't worry. I'm going to do my best to make this story as accessible as possible to anyone, even those who are totally unfamiliar with the Mass Effect universe (which is an awesome universe created by Bioware. I do not own the ME universe, and I make no claims as such. I don't even claim to own the AU I've created, I just play in it) and have not read And the Meek Shall Inherit the Galaxy. **_


	2. Chapter 1

_If you can keep your head when all about you _

_Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, _

_If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,_

_But make allowance for their doubting too; _

_If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,_

_Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,_

_Or being hated, don't give way to hating,_

_And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:_

_If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; _

_If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; _

_If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster_

_And treat those two impostors just the same; _

_If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken_

_Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,_

_Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,_

_And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:_

_If you can make one heap of all your winnings_

_And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,_

_And lose, and start again at your beginnings_

_And never breathe a word about your loss;_

_If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew_

_To serve your turn long after they are gone, _

_And so hold on when there is nothing in you_

_Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'_

_If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, _

_Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,_

_If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,_

_If all men count with you, but none too much;_

_If you can fill the unforgiving minute_

_With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, _

_Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, _

_And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!_

_- If, Rudyard Kipling  
_

_**ILS Normandy SR-1, Sol System - Lieutenant Commander John Shepard nar Arcturus**_

_**March 15th, 2183**_

"Captain on deck!" John Shepard barked, snapping off a salute that was mirrored by the rest of the ships company by the airlock. Wind chimes played in the traditional quarian salute to a senior officer, offset by the trill of human bosun's pipes and the basso rumble of krogan horns over the Normandy's PA system.

Captain David Anderson nodded, returning the salute. "At ease. We've got work to do people, so let's get to it."

"Aye-aye sir!" the various marines and naval personnel chorused, and the ships company scattered back to their workstations.

"Welcome aboard the Normandy, sir," John Shepard stated, then grinned. "Good to see you again sir. It's been too long."

Anderson grinned back, enveloping Shepard in a decidedly non-regulation hug. "You too! You've grown since I had to carry you to the Tai Shan's med bay. And you've stayed busy since graduating from N school as well."

"I think you could say that sir," John answered, his face turning grim as he looked the man who'd been half mentor, half father, and all inspiration since he'd been only nine years old. Anderson's eyes fell to the bit of black and red ribbon upon John's breast, next to the N7 logo both men had on their uniform. The Cross of Brotherhood and Honor Under Fire, the highest award the Independent League could bestow upon its service personnel.

John's mind wandered back six years, to the opening hours of the First Pan-Galactic War. He'd been on leave on Elysium with a friend, and together they'd held off the batarian slavers blitz until help had come. John had survived, barely. Alexandra Harrington, John's childhood friend and fellow N school graduate, had not. John still mourned Alex and the other friends he had lost, in that war and the others since. Elysium had been the true start of John's career, but he still carried the ghosts from that battlefield.

That action was what had landed his current birth, serving as the Executive Officer aboard the very first League stealth recon frigate in command of the marine detachment. As a bona fide war hero and one of the best N7's in the entire League, John was perfect for the Normandy's mission. Quietly go places League forces had no right being and do violent things to the enemies of its member species. That was something John had proven himself very, very good at, as had Captain Anderson. Anderson was a veteran of even more battlefields than John was, though he was getting a bit long in the tooth to actually suit up and pound dirt.

"Sir, may I speak with you privately?" John asked respectfully, going back to an attitude of business.

"Of course Commander," Anderson nodded. "First though, get us underway. Then meet me in the comm room in 90 minutes. I've got a few things I need to take care of."

"Aye-aye sir. Destination?"

"Eden Prime. Fast and quiet. Let's give the new stealth systems a trial run. I don't even want Charon command to know we hit the Eden Prime relay until after we're gone."

"Yes sir." John saluted again, then turned to head up to the galaxy map. It wasn't a very long walk, frigates were not big ships, though the Normandy was at the top end of the scale for a frigate.

"Lieutenant Pressly," John called, nodding to the older, balding human man who was conferencing with one of the quarian engineers.

The older man looked up and nodded. "What can I do for you Commander?"

"Set a course for Eden Prime. Tell Joker to get us there fast and quiet. The captain wants to test out the new stealth systems."

Pressly saluted and nodded. "Aye-aye sir, I'll get it done."

With that taken care of, John started on his "rounds." It was a tradition he'd started many years ago on Jump Zero, Brain Camp to its graduates, where he went around to get a feel for the crews moral and dug a little deep into their pasts. Ships were cramped, with everyone, even the officers, living in each other's laps. The only exception was the ship's captain, who got his own cabin, small and cramped though it was.

John started with another old friend, Doctor Karin Chakwas. As the ships medical officer, Chakwas heard and saw more than most of the ships company, and she was a good barometer for the general attitude aboard ship.

Karin looked up as John stepped in, smiling slightly. "More headaches? Kaidan was by earlier, the two of you have been training hard. If you keep this up, I'm going to run out of migraine medication before we even begin our cruise."

"Not this time Doctor," John grinned. "Though I think I might have skinned my knee again."

"Ha! I remember far too many situations like that when you were in brain camp," Chakwas laughed, then cocked her head to one side. "But you're not here to talk about skinned knees, are you Shepard? Am I to be the latest victim of one of your perambulations? I must say, I think the ship could use one about now."

"Why's that doctor?"

"The tension, you can feel it in the air. The crew knows that this isn't your average shakedown run. We're fully crewed, and people like you and Captain Anderson don't end up together on a cruise if we aren't expecting trouble."

John nodded. "That sounds like what I should expect from the scuttlebutt. I'll make sure to settle everyone. I've got it on good authority that we're headed for Eden Prime. That's well within League territory."

"Hmm, and yet I somehow can't' shake the feeling that there is more to this mission," Dr. Chakwas mused. Then she shrugged. "Ah, well, regardless of those factors, I'll keep you marines patched up when you get banged up. Don't think I don't know your reputation young man. You were bad enough when you were just in the Rumble Room with Grandmaster Shali O'Torus. I've seen your medical record. You've been patched up more times than most krogan are." 

"I'll just have to leave myself in your capable hands doc. Keep a ready supply of medigel though, dextro and levo."

"Oh I will, never fear."

John nodded and stepped out of the med station into the mess. He spied several of his marines gathered around the table, sipping at drinks and looking restless. John strode over, and his own department head, Lieutenant Kaidan Alkeno stood and braced to attention as he approached.

"Atten-shun!" Kaidan barked, and the rest of the marines stood and braced themselves as well.

"At ease, this isn't a formal meeting," John ordered, nodding to the marines. They nodded and relaxed a bit, though they all looked fairly tense. "You boys and girls look like you're expecting trouble."

"I always expect trouble," Lehroi Jehkans growled. "Especially when you're involved Commander."

"That's funny Jehkans," John answered, showing his teeth. " I seem to remember you causing most of it."

That got a chuckled from the marines. John and Jekhans were old schoolmates from Brain Camp, and while they'd been friends by the time they left, there had been bad blood between them at first. They'd gotten into a scrap that had hospitalized both of them, which John had won, barely. After that, John had earned the krogans grudging respect, and they'd been friends since. Which was good, because these days Jekhans was massive being. The krogan was big even for his species, and towered over the 1.9 meter human Commander at 2.6 meters. 

Bowing his head in submission, Jekhans' rumbled, "Only for our enemies, Shepard."

"This whole run smells like trouble to me," Ardun Valk growled, blinking her four eyes one at time. "With respect sir, what's an N squad like this doing on a shakedown run?"

"The same thing we always do marine," John answered. "Our jobs. Which right now, consists of waiting for orders. Understood?"

"Aye-aye sir," Valk answered, saluting crisply. "I have nothing but respect for you and the captain, but I'm worried. I've heard from my family back home. The Citadel's stepped up their patrols on the border, and they're been too many skirmishes to make me feel comfortable lately. To many of my sisters are still under the Council's boot."

"We're not here to fight the Council," John cautioned. "Remember, the real enemy is still out there."

Valk nodded. "Of course sir. Too many of my friends were killed for me to forget the Reapers. I'm from Camala, but even there we felt the shadow."

"We should have kept fighting when we had the chance," Prazza'Mal vas Normandy growled. The quarian marine had a few marks on his record indicating he had an attitude problem, but he was also an excellent engineer. John was confident he could keep Nara in line; he and Kaidan could come down like a ton of bricks when they had too.

John shook his head, looking pointedly at Mal, Valk and Jekhans. "We're marines. It's natural to want to fight. But keep your heads cool and your minds sharp. If there is more to this mission, you'll find out when the time comes. Until then, we stay disciplined. Understood?"

"Aye-aye sir," the marines chorused.

Nodding in satisfaction, John jerked his head at Kaidan. "Lieutenant, come with me down to the armory. I want to check out the mako."

"Of course commander," Kaidan agreed, standing and heading over to the elevator with John.

Once the door slid shut, Kaidan sighed and rubbed his temple, his eyes squeezed shut tight.

"The doc said you were having problems again," John observed. "Bad?"

"Nothing I can't handle sir, you know that," Kaidan assured. "But I don't think the mako needs any additional inspections, or that you just want to talk about the fact that both of us get headaches and nosebleeds from time to time. This about the mission?"

"Yes. I agree with the troops. Something's up. We've got three biotics on our ground team Kaidan. Three. What's that tell you?"

"Either they expect us to get into serious trouble, or personnel screwed up. And I don't think Arcturus was going to let many foul ups happen on this bird."

"Exactly. We're making for Eden Prime. Know anything that might send up flags?"

Kaidan frowned, rubbing his chin. "Other than what you know? Probably not. It's an older colony and fairly secure. The last time it was threatened at all was the Blitz, and even then not many of the raiders actually made it to the surface. Although..."

"You trailed off there. I need to know if there's anything at all Kaidan."

"Well, it could be nothing. But you know I read the scientific journals from time to time, helps calm me down. I seen repeated mention of a prothean dig there. That's not unusual, Eden Prime was a prothean world. But recently, nothing's been reported from that dig. Now, it's possible there's nothing to talk about, but on the other hand..."

"On the other hand they found something big enough that they're not talking at all," John grimaced. "Prothean. That could mean the Council. And this deep in our turf, Council means Spectres. You think they'd make a grab?"

"It would have to be pretty big for them to risk it. A Council Spectre in League territory would be bad enough, but one trying to steal prothean artifacts from a League world would reignite the war for sure."

The elevator opened, and John and Kaidan walked over to the mako. It was an impressive sight, one that took up most of the Normandy's cargo bay. The mako infantry fighting vehicle was the latest in League military hardware. It possessed an eezo core that allowed or orbital insertion, a canon that could take out a turian tank, and room for half a dozen marines, plus crew. It was a tight squeeze, but it beat walking.

"Fancy a ride?" John asked, grinning slightly.

Kaidan rolled his eyes. "Only if I drive."

John clutched his chest, feigning injury. "Kaidan, you wound me!"

"Uh-huh. Do you remember my graduation?"

"Of course, we took a shuttle dirtside and went bumming around the Australian outback for a few days."

"And how many times did you, me, and Jak manage to crash that ancient jeep?"

"Oh, probably half a dozen times."

"And how many times did you crash it, sir? On flat, open ground I might add."

"Half a dozen. But I was just a kid then! You can't honestly think my driving hasn't improved."

"Has your dancing?"

"That's low marine. Real low."

They bantered like the old friends there were for a while, then John continued his walk. He talked with Adams in engineering, and the sarcastic pilot, Flight Lieutenant Moreau. John decided he was going to keep an eye on the pilot, and not because of the man's brittle bone disease. The nickname, "Joker," set off enough alarm bells. His unkempt appearance and unprofessional attitude made John sit up and take notice. He wasn't going to do anything unless the pilot proved a problem, but at the same time he needed to keep an eye on the man. On a ship this small, a bad attitude could fester like an open wound.

Exactly at the appointed time, John stepped into the comm room. It was empty, save for the captain. Anderson looked up from a data slate when Shepard entered the room and nodded. "Right on time Commander. Let's get straight to the point. This isn't what you would call your standard shake down run."

John nodded, spreading his legs slightly and putting his hands behind his back in the at ease position. He stayed silent, politely waiting for his superior to explain.

"The Normandy is the first in her class, as you know. The council has had stealth ships for years, and the League is just now catching up. We're too valuable for command to dither about with more trial runs. Which means our mission to Eden Prime is the real deal. We're after a prothean beacon."

John kept his face neutral, though internally he was nodding in confirmation. This was exactly the sort of discovery that might just be big enough for the Citadel to risk full scale war. It had been the Mars prothean archives that had given the League the leg up it needed to catch up and in many ways surpass the Citadel. A beacon could contain additional knowledge that might tip the delicate balance of power. That wasn't something the Council would be willing to risk.

"Shepard, I don't think I need to tell you this, but word of this cannot get out. If it does, the consequences could be disastrous. If the Council knew we were taking a beacon back to Mars for study, they might just preemptively declare war before we could get the data we need from it."

"Sir, I think I can assure you that everyone on board is ready for this. We all know what's at stake, especially the batarians on the crew. They've seen what war can do to a world first hand."

Anderson grunted. "And all too many of the others as well. You were there during the blitz son. You know that war with the Council would be exponentially worse. We have to keep the peace, at least for now."

"Aye-aye sir, I'll draw up retrieval plans for the ground team, I think we-"

"Captain, we just came through the Eden Prime relay 10 minutes ago. We're getting a transmission from the planet," Joker's voice suddenly stated over the intercom. "I think you need to see this sir."

"Put it on screen Joker," Anderson ordered, stepping over to one of the displays.

A grim faced human woman appeared, her face stained with sweat and blood. "This is Lieutenant Commander Ashley Williams. Eden Prime is under attack, I repeat-"

Another body crashed into Ashley, and the camera shook as the sound of an explosion distorted the audio. After a moment, the camera shifted, suddenly, as whoever's helmet it was in turned and fired at distant shapes. Then it looked up as a drop ship appeared over head, one in the shape of a scarab-like insect. Then it panned back to a snarling Williams. "This is code Delta, they're after the Macguffin. We can't-"

The screen suddenly went to static. "It just cuts out after that sir, and the entire planet's silent. Multiple hostile ships in orbit. The defense fleet's a cloud of debris," Joker added.

Anderson frowned for a moment, then turned to John. "Take us in to the coordinates that video was broadcast from. Keep the stealth drives engaged."

"Aye sir," Joker's voice answered, much more subdued than it normally was.

Shaking his head, Anderson locked eyes with John. "This mission just got a lot more complicated."

"Yes sir," John fervently agreed. "But what are the geth doing here? They haven't been out of the Veil in 300 years. What changed?"

Anderson shrugged. "That's for someone else to determine. Right now, we've got a more immediate problem: Getting that beacon before the geth get to it."

Twenty minutes later, John was with his ground team in the Normandy's hanger. They were all preped and briefed in on the situation, and everyone was wearing their game faces. Mal was especially grim. The geth were the quarian's ancient foe, and the reason that his people now called Earth their homeworld instead of Rannoch.

"Your priority is the beacon!" Anderson shouted as the hangar bay door slid open. "Find it, and signal us for retrieval! The fleet will just have to sort the rest of this mess out later."

"Aye sir!" John shouted, then turned to his men and jerked his head out the door. "Let's move marines!" 

The Normandy was still a few hundred feet above the ground, and John's eezo powered grav belt kicked in, slowing his decent enough that he only landed about as hard as if he'd jumped five meters. John rolled, coming up with his Rapier shotgun at the read. The rest of his squad landed and formed up, then moved out. John looked into the distance. The fields of Eden Prime's lush agriculture were burning. Defenses from the main colony traced angry lines through the smoke blackened sky, and the geth's own weapons fired back, most of them slashing into the colonies kinetic barriers.

"This is bad," Jekhans growled. "the Oath of Protection will bid the krogan people attack the geth in force now. That opens up a front we can ill afford now."

"Don't forget the quarians," Mal growled. "We already owe the geth a debt. Now they invade our new home? It's time we paid more attention to what happens behind the Veil."

"Stay sharp," John barked. "There's sure to be more geth ahead. Jekhans, take point."

The big krogan growled his agreement and stormed ahead, weaving his way through a rocky outcropping. John paused, watching the squad file past. Something didn't feel right, where were the-

His head snapped around as John heard the sounds of rapid fire mass accelerators. A flight of drones had swarmed out from behind the rocks, and their fire ripped into Jekhans'. The krogan jerked, and blood splattered the ground as his shields and armor were torn to shreds.

With a roar, John jerked forward, using his biotics to yank him across the battlefield faster than the eye could see. He crashed into a drone and fired into it twice, sending the disk shaped platform spinning away with a large hole in its center. Kaidan biotically warped the shields of another as Mal's electronic hack overloaded a third, and Valk's Valkyrie assault rifle barked as she blasted the last drone into scrap. With the drones down, Kaidan rushed to the stricken krogan's side.

"I'm OK!" Jekhan's wheezed, struggling upright as his regenerative biology sealed his wounds. "Just need some medigel. Sorry Commander, I was reckless."

"Pain is the best teacher. I think you've learned your lesson," John answered, slapping a patch of medigel on one of Jekhan's wounds. The krogan would live, which was why John had put him on point. Everyone was angry, and that dulled your senses. Unlike a human or quarian, who would have died from wounds like these, a krogan like Jekhan could take punishment that severe and keep fighting. "Come on, let's move. The geth know we're here now."

The team continued to advance, now going by twos so that the others behind could cover those advancing in a leap frog pattern. It paid off when more drones appeared, these armed with rockets. The first barrage forced Valk and Mal into cover, and John stood to launch a kinetic biotic strike, then ducked back down. As soon as he did, Kaidan stood and hit the drone John had targeted with a warp. The two biotic energy fields collided and reacted, producing a violent explosion that knocked the drone from the sky. Jekhans lifted his massive M-100k grenade launcher and hit two drone that had drifted too close together with an air burst. John one down with his Rapier and Kaidan's Eagle Pistol punched holes in the other. Valk and Mal focused their fire to bring down the last drone.

John's ears were still ringing from the firefight, but in the distance he heard the sound of a old model Revenant squad support weapon opening up. "Sounds like the garrison is still fighting. Move out!"

The team crested a rise looking down into the valley where the dig site lay, and John raised a fist to order a halt. Pulling out his electronic field glasses, John took a moment to survey the valley. He caught site of several metallic beings with cyclopic eyes pulling a struggling human towards an oblong container. One of the geth stabbed the man in the neck with something, and his struggles ceased. Then the geth put the man in the container and sealed it. There were already several dozen full containers in neat rows, a grim testament to the geth's efficiency.

"They're rounding up the scientists and other civilians loading them for transport," John growled, tucking away the glasses. "Come on."

The squad ran forward a few hundred more meters, then dove for cover when mass effect rounds peppered the ground around them and flew over their heads. John peaked out from behind a boulder, and spied a team of Leaguers in full retreat. One of them, a krogan, was the one wielding the distinctive sounding Revenant. He was spraying bullets in the direction he was retreating from, using his body as a shield for the others. He finally gave out as the rest of his party reached cover, slumping to the ground as the geth's fire tore him to shreds. The others peaked out from behind their boulder and fired back at the geth, but they were clearly outnumbered. Additional geth trooper platforms like the ones John had seen impaling the human were advancing, supported by drones.

"Covering fire!" John ordered, and stood and hurled a biotic warp at the geth. "Spread out, flank the geth!"

The rest of the squad smoothly split, dashing from boulder to boulder as they fired on the geth. The beleaguered friendly squad raised a cheer and intensified their own fire, rallying as they saw the friendly forces. Caught between two forces, the geth assault fragmented, then was destroyed as John's squad swept down upon them.

"Kaidan, get some marines on that hill. I want to know what's coming for us," John ordered, then stepped over to people he'd just rescued, keeping his gun pointed up into the air. "Lieutenant Commander Shepard, League Marines. What's the situation?"

"You still don't know how to hold a goddamn gun, recruit," one of the other humans growled. The he reached up and pulled off his helmet, revealing an old, weathered face with a massive scar over an artificial eye. "Well dip me metal and call me a turian. Goddamn but it's good to see you Johnny."

"Gunny?" John gasped, taken aback for a moment. Then he grinned and saluted, lowering his gun so that it pointed at the floor and stepped forward to shake Zaeed Massani's hand. "I haven't seen you since you pinned my N7 strip on. What the hell is a bosh'tet like you don't here chief?"

Zaeed laughed bitterly. "I'm goddamn retired, can't you tell?"

Another human stepped forward, saluting crisply. "Lieutenant Commander Ashley Williams, 2nd Frontier Division, fourth company, commanding officer. What's left of it, anyway."

"All here ma'am," a quarian with chief stripes on his armor grunted. John glanced around and tried not to blanch. The other four were obviously not members of the 2nd Frontier.

"We'll have to hold introductions later," John said before anyone else could speak up. "Right now, we need to find that beacon. Williams, you're the woman on the ground here. What's the situation?"

"Bad sir," Williams answered, a grateful look in her eye. John could easily have undercut her and asked Zaeed, who he obviously new. But John was respecting the chain of command and addressing the officer in charge. Even if her command was likely wiped out. "The geth his us hard and fast. We only had a few minutes warning, and most of the garrison wasn't able to deploy. Kinetic strike on the main bunkhouse. I got the few people I had on the perimeter to close up and try to defend the dig site and beacon, but the geth hit us hard. We're all that's left. It wasn't for Chief Massani and his friends, the 2nd wouldn't exist anymore at all. They came in from the hills and hit the bastards in the rear. We were forced to retreat, but we made those metal bosh'tets pay."

That was far worse than John had thought. "So the geth have the beacon?"

"Aye sir," Ashley nodded. "We were making a push for it, but we were driven back again. Leerg, the krogan..."

"Dead ma'am," Valk said, coming up and shaking her head. "Must have near a hundred rounds in him. He died hard, there's a pile of dead geth with Revenant sized holes in them back there."

The female quarian in non-standard armor flinched and bowed her head. John's eyes narrowed. Unless he missed his guess, the dead krogan was one of his old instructors, Jorgal Leerg. He was a legend among the N7, though he was off active duty. That meant the quarian was Oro'Veskar, reputedly the deadliest markswoman the League had ever seen. If they'd been pushed back along with Zaeed, things were ugly.

"We've got to get to the beacon. My team's making a push for it," John stated. He didn't ask for anyone to join him, these soldiers had already been through hell. If their spirits were broken, they wouldn't do him any good.

"Guess I better come with and make sure you're guns pointed down range," Zaeed growled, stepping forward. The two female batarians behind him who'd remained silent stepped forward, their guns held with purpose and assurance. Fighters, then.

"I'm with you sir," Williams piped up. "I'll follow your lead."

"Guess I better come with. This many officers are gonna need at least one Chief to babysit them," the quarian remarked to absolutely no one and everyone.

Zaeed grinned, his scar turning the expression into a ghoulish one. "If you're half as good as your father, you're more than welcome Chief Reegar." 

"Thank you sir," Reegar answered, nodding to Zaeed.

"Right then, move out!" John ordered. The two squads advanced, pushing back towards the geth lines.

In the distance, the sirens of Eden Prime continued to wail as the once green planet burned.

_**Prothean Digsite, Eden Prime - Spectre Nihlus Kryik**_

_**March 15th, 2183**_

There were a great many places in the galaxy that Nihlus would rather be at this particular moment than on Eden Prime. Unfortunately, Nihlus also estimated that there was no place he needed to be more. The once green world of Eden Prime was under assault from the geth, a synthetic race long thought banished to the dark corners of the galaxy. Of course, that had been before the humans had buddied up to their creators, the quarians. It had taken more than two decades, but it appeared that the geth were making their move now.

"Just what this galaxy needs, another faction in this conflict," Nihlus growled. The Citadel and League were the big players, but there was the Illuminated Primacy and the Omega Alliance out there as well. Minor powers and with militaries dwarfed by the two galactic super states, but with the geth in play the waters would be further muddied. Still, perhaps the geth would have the good graces to focus only on the League, weakening them enough that the Citadel could force them to stand down. "Sure. And maybe asari will suddenly lose interest in sex."

Originally, Nihlus had been sent to Eden Prime to monitor the League's activity and estimate their threat to the Council. When they'd uncovered the beacon, Nihlus had sent a frantic message to the Council. He'd intended to sabotage or steal the beacon somehow, but the geth had arrived before he could put his plan into action.

Right now, Nihlus was keeping a close eye on the prothean beacon that the geth had moved to the star port. He couldn't possibly hope to take down the score of geth combat platforms in the area, but he could at least hope to find out what they were doing with it. For now, the geth were just standing around as one of their dropships shrieked in from on high. Nihlus watch as the geth all turned and knelt to the ship. That was strange, why would they do that?

More geth walked off, forming a corridor of troopers, almost like a bodyguard as their electronic warbles they used to communicate filled their air in a song-like cacophony. Then Nihlus' blood ran cold. Out of the shuttle stepped a turian, his metal skin glinting in the dim, smoke-filled light.

"Saren," Nihlus growled.

Saren Arterius had once been a Spectre like Nihlus. He'd served the Council well and faithfully for decades, until something had gone wrong. For whatever reason, Saren had decided to attempt to spark a war between the Citadel and the League. His hatred of the League had been well known, Saren had been a POW during the League/Turian Conflict of 2157. Somehow, that had translated to Saren actively working with the Reapers to destroy the League. He was considered the greatest traitor to the turian people to have ever lived.

Swearing softly, Nihlus' finger twitched toward the trigger. He had Saren in his sights, but he couldn't take the shot without revealing himself. Saren had been thought dead, killed by Flavus Vakarian six years ago when he'd chased Saren down on Omega station. They'd never found the body though, and privately Nihlus had always figured that Saren had slipped away, even if they had found a pool of his blood large enough to kill any normal turian.

Saren stepped up to the prothean beacon and the construct glowed with sudden life. Saren was lifted into the air for a few moments, then set back down. What was going on? What was the traitor doing? Nihlus leaned closer, coming closer to the ledge he was spying from. His motion disturbed a small rock, causing it to fall in a puff of dirt. Nihlus pressed back down, praying to the spirits no one had noticed.

Saren turned, glaring up at where the rock had fallen. Then he extended a talon and pointed right at Nihlus. The geth turned as one and began to advance, firing as they came. Nihlus scrambled away, wincing as his shields drained and a shot grazed his shoulder. This day just kept getting better and better.

_**Prothean Digsite, Eden Prime - John Shepard**_

_**March 15th, 2183**_

"Sir, we've got movement up ahead," Prazza'Mal called over the radio.

"Geth?" John asked, holding up a fist to halt his column.

"Yes sir, but they're chasing someone. A turian."

"We've had reports of a turian sneaking around the colony," Kal'Reegar whispered from John's side. "Nothing confirmed, every time we sent out patrols we came up empty."

Thinking quickly, John made a snap decision. "If the geth are chasing him, I want that turian alive. If possible."

"On it sir!" Mal responded, and the sound of his Valkyrie assault rifle echoed through the valley.

"Dammit marine wait for backup!" John swore, motioning his team forward.

"Sir, there's only a few geth, I should be... Sweet Ancestors, that's a big one." John heard an explosion, and Mal's link went dead.

"Valk, Kaiden! Get to Mal now!" John snapped, storming up the hill with Reegar and Williams hot on his heels.

"He's down sir, and the geth have got us pinned," Kaidan answered. "They hit that turian too, looks like he's bleeding out."

John caught sight of the geth, who were pouring fire at the rock Kaidan and Valk were sheltering behind. The lead geth was enormous, standing over 2 meters tall and wielding a massive rocket launcher that was rapidly reducing John's soldiers shelter to rumble.

"Jekhans, charge my target on my mark. Mark!"

John and the krogan biotic leapt forward, using their biotics to propel them at near light speed. They slammed into the lead geth almost simultaneously, causing it's armor to crumple as the massive construct was thrown away. Rounds scattered off John's shields, but he and Jekhans stood their ground and fired at the remaining geth. John's shotgun punched holes in the geths' barriers, and Jekhans' grenades blew them to smithereens. More geth tried to flank the two marines, but Ashley lead the others against them, driving the geth assault back, at least temporarily.

"Check on Mal," John ordered, hurrying over to where the turian lay. "Who are you? Why are you here?

"Saren," the turian coughed, his eyes starting to film over with pain. "Saren... geth... the beacon..."

"Hold on, I've got dextro medigel, I'm administering it now."

John injected the medigel, and the turian closed his eyes, laying back down in the dirt. He seemed to have stabilized, but that might change.

"Shit," John growled softly, then activated his comm. "Massani, Veskar, get over here."

The two retired ncos hurried over. John nodded to the body. "Is this who I think it is?"

"Goddamn it," Zaeed spat. "if you think that's Spectre Nihlus, then yes."

Veskar knelt, gently searching Nihlus. "What's Nihlus doing here? Why would the head of the Citadel's anti-Reaper task force be on Eden Prime?"

"He said something about Saren and the geth," John whispered, his eyes up and watching for enemies.

Grimacing, Zaeed glanced up at the geth dropships visible in the distance. "It means that this situation is a hell of alot worse than it looks. And it looks goddamn awful."

"That's what I thought. I'm going to have to get hold of Vakarian," John muttered.

Zaeed nodded. "Falvus' kid?"

"The same. I worked with him a couple times out in the Kites Nest, taking care of pockets of Indoctrinated batarians. If Saren's alive... Well, he's going to want to know. That, and perhaps we can finally convince people who the real threat is."

"Good luck with that Commander," Veskar muttered. She stood and shook her head. "Wasn't carrying any intel I can see. Still, I swiped his omnitool, but don't expect to get anything off it. Nihlus is a pro. If any of us survive this, I wouldn't bet on getting much intel from his interrogation."

"Then it's time to move on," John motioned the team forward, and they made their way over the hill to the spaceport. There were quite a few active geth, and the beacon sat right at their center. John surveyed the area and came to a quick decision. The geth were obviously mustering for another assault on his team. If he gave them time to launch it, the two squads would be overwhelmed. Mal was down, dead from his reckless engagement. If John waited, he was going to have a lot more dead marines.

"Williams, take Veskar, Valk, Reegar and the two batarians you came with. You're providing covering fire. Alenko, Massani, bring the Spectre with us. He might be the key to this whole mess. Jekhans, you're with me. We're hitting them hard and fast. Jekhan's and I will close with biotics and try and secure control of the beacon. Go."

The teams split, and moments later John rushed headlong down the hill, sprinting for an overturned crate at the base while Williams and her squad opened up on the geth. Veskar proved to be worthy of the title of deadliest shot in League space by using her massive Black Widow rifle to drop two of the larger geth within moments. The other geth were forced into cover by the team's sustained fire, and only a few shots splattered of John's squads shields before they reached the crate. Waiting a few seconds for his barriers to recharge, John lobbed a grenade over the crate, aiming for a cluster of geth.

"Try not to damage the beacon!" he shouted, then vaulted over the crate and used his biotics to launch him into a knot of geth. John's initial charge stunned the geth, and the burst of biotic power from his landing laced them with biotic charges. John then collapsed his biotic barrier, drawing the energy in then causing it to radiate in a sphere of force from his body. The geth went tumbling away, their barriers drained by the radiant energies. The rest of the team picked off the geth before they could rise, and again John hurled himself forward.

This time he crashed into one of the larger geth, which managed to stay on its feet. John stabbed forward with his shotgun, which had a mono-molecular silicon bayonet attachment. It easily pierced the geth's armor, and as he drew his weapon back John fired, denting the heavy armor. He jumped to the side as the geth brought its own massive weapon down where his head had been, using his biotics to warp the armor of the geth and make it more vulnerable to his attacks. The geth's head exploded, and the faint white trail of an anti-material round showed John that Veskar had just added another geth to her tally.

Spinning around, John checked for more hostiles. Nothing. He scanned the skies, but no transports were racing towards them. In fact, they were all leaving, speeding for the upper atmosphere. "It won't be that easy, check for traps!" John barked.

After just a quick sweep, the team found a bomb, an ancient turian design, probably from one of their stockpiles. "This isn't the only one, find them all. Check for pockets of radiation."

Two minutes later, the team reported six bombs disarmed. John breathed a sigh of relief, and touched his hand to his helmet to contact the Normandy. "Normandy, this is shore party. We've located the beacon and several survivors. I have one casualty that's going to need-" John's head snapped around. Williams had stepped forward to inspect the beacon, and it had somehow activated. She was trying to scramble away, but it was drawing her in somehow. Without hesitation, John sprang forward, shoving Valk out of the way. Grabbing Williams around her torso, John spun in place and threw her clear, then tried to jump out of the way. His feet slid, and he turned, trying to-

_**bodies**_

_**pain**_

_**torment**_

_**blood**_

_**beasts**_

_**fire**_

_**death**_

_**scream**_

_**darkness**_

_**stars**_

_**away**_

John's mind fled.


	3. Chapter 2

_It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. _

_- The Man in the Arena, Theodore Roosevelt_

_**CSV Archangel, Parnitha System - Council Spectre Garrus Vakarian **_

_**March 15th, 2183**_

Glancing out the viewport momentarily, Garrus watched as the Archangel drifted back into normal space and the colors bled from the relay transit. They'd just transitioned through the Kite's Nest relay in the Batarian DMZ. Garrus and his team had spent the last six months in a grueling campaign in the hills and mountains of Adrek. The planet's entire atmosphere was toxic, and the native invasive molds and fungi had played hell with the equipment. Still, Garrus had successfully rooted out a nest of batarian "freedom fighters." A collection of terrorists, Indoctrinated, and thugs who'd been playing hell with the Council's efforts to rebuild the batarian economy in the sector.

Garrus' mandibles spread in the turian equivalent of a faint grin, his head quills relaxing slightly. Even for a turian, Garrus was quite tall at two meters, his long, lanky frame covered in bulky, scarred blue armor. His metallic skin gleamed dully in the light of the ships battery room, a result of the high levels of solar radiation on the turian homeworld of Palaven. The turians were one of the major Citadel races, and the strong arm of the Council. For a thousand years, it had been the turians who protected the galaxy from danger and upheld the law. As a Council Spectre, Garrus continued that tradition. He was the watcher on the wall, the guardian against the monsters in dark places.

Once the rainbow had faded, Garrus put his head back down, working on calibrating the main gun of the Archangel. It might seem silly to some that a spectre would spend so much time on routine maintenance, but it was how Garrus relaxed. He didn't have many hobbies, but working on a big gun was what he did in his limited free time. He was in the Parnitha system to resupply, and get a little shore leave in. Like so many other turians, Garrus found the asari both alluring and alien. Spirits, even Nyreen had a downright preference for asari, and if Fuli hadn't already hooked up with Blasto the pilot, they'd probably be together.

Snorting, Garrus got back to work. He didn't have time to think about women, especially his frustrating biotic specialist, Nyreen Kandros. They'd had flings throughout the years, but never anything serious. That sort of grated Garrus' plates. He wanted... Something. He wasn't sure. Sometimes he wanted to forget the Spectre life and settle down and have kids. Other times he wanted a loyal companion who would stand beside him in the fight. But most of the time, Garrus just wanted to kill every criminal and Reaper scumbag in the galaxy.

In the past seven years since he'd become a spectre, Garrus had seen a lot of things. He'd seen an elcor diplomat who had gone on a killing spree for no better reason that he could. He'd seen a mad doctor who grew organs and harvested them from inside living test tubes. He'd seen slavers who would slit their own mother's throats for the smallest advantage. The galaxy was a dark place. Garrus believed his job was to make it just a bit brighter. One dead scumbag at a time.

"Still working on that? Geeze Garr, why don't you give it a rest eh? We're going to Thessia! Woman, wine, relaxation! Spirits, I might even get that mold out from my head quills."

"Some of us enjoy our work Sidonis. Besides, you never know when you're going to need a really big gun," Garrus stated, not bothering to look up.

The other turian made his way over and glanced at what Garrus was working on. "I don't get it. That screen looks pretty much the same to me as it always done. What are you changing?"

"Small things that add up to big things," Garrus sighed, finally meeting Sidonis' eyes. "Like always. You just have to hope that all the little changes you make will add up to something worthwhile."

Grunting, Sidonis looked away and scratched at his head fringe. "Yeah, well, some of us are getting fed up with all the small stuff. I want to make a difference before I die. That's why I signed on with you Garrus. Was I wrong?"

"I hope not," Garrus answered, bending back down to his work. "Otherwise we've both been wasting our time. But think of the lives we saved just on the last mission. Who knows how much damage those scum would have caused if we'd let them run wild?"

Sidonis just grunted. "They're small fry though. Garrus, I know how you feel about the League, but the signs are obvious. Justified or not, war is coming."

Doing his best not to growl, Garrus gave up on calibrating and turned to glare at Sidonis. "They're not the real enemy. You know that. The Reapers ARE."

"Yeah, except the Reapers didn't kill twenty-three turians in a border conflict last week," Sidonis shot back. "That seems pretty titans damned real to me."

"We've been over this. You want to take the fight to the League? Fine. Transfer back to the Blackguard. On this ship, we fight Reapers. If the League becomes a problem, we'll fight them. But they are not the primary goal."

Sidonis nodded, his mandibles lowering. "Alright, alright, I'm sorry. It's just hard to look at the casualty reports. I won't mention this to any of the others. As far as they're concerned, I'm still your loyal childhood buddy. I just want to be real with you, boss."

"I appreciate that, Lantar. We're friends. I trust your judgment, and I respect your opinion. Sometimes even I want to bust some Leaguer heads. But now isn't the time."

"Right, well, I guess I'll head back to the bridge then. Should be landing in a few hours."

Lantar turned and left, leaving Garrus to work on the gun again. After a few minutes, Garrus was lost in the minutia of firing algorithms and tracking data analysis. It was soothing, quantifiable, clear progress toward a goal. Unlike fighting packs of mercs on batarian colonies.

"Spectre Vakarian, this one has just received a distress call," Blasto, the face name of Sees the Enemies of the Enkindlers and is Enraged, said with utmost politeness over the intercom. That didn't mean much, Blasto was always polite, even when he was stealing your car or robbing you blind. The jellyfish like hanar seemed obsequious and overly formal to most of the galaxies races, though Blasto was a bit more acidic about it then his brethren.

"From where?" Garrus asked, glancing up as his mandibles lowered in consternation. They were in asari space. The Republic navy should respond to that sort of thing.

"Thessia. All of it."

Now Garrus' mandibles sprang up in alarm. "What do you mean, 'all of it?'"

"What this one means is that Thessia is under attack. The local defensive forces are in shambles, and the main body of the fleet is rushing toward Thessia with all possible speed. This one projects that they shall not arrive for several hours." 

"Sound battle stations," Garrus snapped. "And put as down as close to the center of the enemy assault as you can. Who is it, the League? Reapers?"

"This one does not know," Blasto answered, a slight tremor in this voice. "But if this one had to guess, this one would say it is likely the vessels spotted consorting with the League organization Cerberus. The Collectors. There are over 300 such vessels, from capital ship weight up. This one suspects the enemy cruised in on a ballistic course and overwhelmed the Thessia inner defenses before the foes tripped any alarms ."

"Titans' take it," Garrus snarled, slamming his talons down the main gun's consol. "Get the team to the assault shuttles, and engage the stealth systems."

"This one will comply."

Garrus stormed out of the main battery and stepped onto the elevator. Fuli P'Safen and Schells Ekks joined him. Fuli was an asari maiden who had decided that life working for a Council spectre would be more exciting then joining the newly minted Army of the Republics, and Schells was a salarian who'd needed to get out of town, fast, thanks to his habit of rigging gambling machines. He was lethal with an omnitool though, and the fastest hacker and safer cracker Garrus had ever meant, which meant he was now putting his shady skills to use for the side of justice. Fuli on the other hard was almost painfully bright and chipper. Her sunshine and enthusiasm sometimes clashed with Garrus' determined realism and general pessimism, but she was the team pet, so Garrus kept her around. Besides, her biotics were strong enough, and she wasn't half bad with a shotgun.

"Is it true?" Fuli demanded, her normal chipper demeanor shattered and her voice on the edge of tears. Her large eyes were watery, and her normally royal blue skin had taken on a much paler, sickly shade of topaz.

Garrus nodded. "Yes. Thessia is under attack. Nothing's certain yet, but it appears to be the Collectors."

"Looks like the League found a suitable proxy to fight us after all," Schells grumbled, his large, frog like eyes blinking rapidly in irritation as he scratched his left eye-horn. Salarians were naturally amphibious, spending as much time in the water as out, and extended stays in the dry air of a turian ship made Schells skin dry and flake.

"We don't know that for sure," Garrus answered as mildly as he could. He was thinking the same thing, but no need to jump to conclusions.

"Oh Goddess, this is bad, oh so bad. My mother's on Thessia! What if she's killed! Oh Goddess, that's my home! How could they attack Thessia! It's so pretty!"

"Bet the batarians felt that way about Kher'Shan before the League leveled it," Schells observed acidly.

Garrus glared at the salarian, and he held up his hands and surrender and fell silent. When the elevator doors open, Fuli sprinted for her locker and started yanking out her armor. Schells walked over to his own locker more casually, though he was just as quick to get his armor on. Garrus was already wearing his, and he simply walked over and lifted his custom Mantis sniper rifle from its rack. It was fitted with a custom scope, barrel and heat sink, allowing for up to two shots before the weapon overheated and had to vent. The Mantis was the most powerful single shot mass accelerator there was, having undergone a drastic redesign in the past decade as a krogan killing weapon. It had served Garrus well on dozens of worlds in its time.

Nyreen, Sidonis and Nox Reldar came off the lift a few minutes later. The taciturn Nox was the only batarian on Garrus' crew, and he was a giant of a sentient. He stood the same height as the 2 meter tall Garrus, but was much broader. Big as he was, Nox wasn't exactly the most nimble member of Garrus' crew, but that didn't matter. Since he was already about as subtle as an elcor, Nox fought like the four legged giants. Namely by carrying around an enormous Reaver squad support weapon and wearing armor heavy enough that it might pass muster for warship hull plating. During the First Pan-Galactic War, Nox had lost his family to Indoctrination. His hatred of the Reapers burned deep and darkly, and Garrus had never seen the batarian smile except when he was gunning down Reaper servitors. It wasn't a happy thing, Nox's smile. It was the sort of smile that killed flowers and made small children cry.

"Reapers?" Nox asked, coming over to Garrus.

"Collectors," Garrus answered. They mysterious Collectors were an insect like race, with four eyes in a horizontal row on their wedge shaped heads and mottled brown carpaces. No one had ever been able to study them, as they spent most of their time behind the impenetrable Omega relay. Unlike most of the mass relays that had been left behind by the ancients, the Omega relay seemed to only respond to Collector vessels, rather like the telays constructed by the League and Citadel in recent years.

Nox grunted. "Slaver scum. Good enough." Nox's view of the world was simple. There were two kinds of people: those that deserved to live, and those that were scum and deserved to die. Garrus could appreciate that in a man.

It didn't take the ground team long to assemble. Garrus had glanced over the data Blasto had sent him. He grimaced. The Collector forces had gathered around the Temple of Athame. That was where the asari had the largest cache of prothean relics in the known galaxy, even more that the vaunted Martian archives of the League. Losing those would be a heavy blow to the Citadel, and letting the League's allies get there talons on it was going to be worse.

"Alright, here's how this is going down," Garrus told his assembled troops. "The Collectors are hitting the temple of Athame. Apparently, they're using some sort of plague spread by flying insects. It's paralyzing anyone with exposed skin, so load of toxic atmosphere. They'll drain your barriers if you get caught in a swarm of them, so watch for that. Biotics and fire seem to keep them at bay, so Nox, trade the cannon out for a flame thrower. Kandros, P'Safen, you're on defensive detail. Keep those things off of us. Our priority is to hold on to the scientists and relics. At last transmission, the Temple Guard and the justicars were holding. Barely. We need to make sure they do not fall. Understand?"

The others nodded. Garrus took a deep breath. "I know what some of you are thinking. I'm thinking the same thing as well. However, we need to keep an open mind. If the League is behind this, we need evidence to prove it. If they are not, we need to find out who is. Keep an eye out for any telling signs."

"What, like a convenient dossier stating the Collectors goals and intended targets?"Sidonus asked, his mandibles spread in an attempt at humor.

"If you find one, let me know. I'll make sure you get a medal for it," Garrus deadpanned back. "Be ready. We drop in five."

Nyreen came over while the others finished their last minute preparations, concern causing her mandibles to tremor slightly. Female turians had more pronounced mandibles than the males, and shorter head quills, along with a more delicate frame. "Garrus, are you alright? You seem upset. Well, more than that, I suppose. Disheartened I guess."

"What if it is the League, Nyreen?" Garrus asked quietly. "What if I've been wrong all this time? What if they're the real threat and not the Reapers?"

Nyreen shrugged. "Then you were wrong. You still did good while you fought the Reapers. It's not like you could have seen this or prevented it Garrus. Your father would still be proud of you."

True to form, Nyreen hit closer to the heart of the issue that Garrus had been willing to go. Flavus Vakarian had been one of the most successful Spectres in Council history. He'd been instrumental in uncovering the plots of Saren Arterius and Tevos the Exile, the most infamous traitors and criminals in the history of the Council. Together they'd conspired with the Reapers, willingly or not, to plunge the entire galaxy into war. Garrus' father had stopped their plot on Omega, but it had cost him his life. He'd ended his career the most decorated turian Spectre in Council history.

And he'd also been one of the greatest advocates for intergalactic cooperation between Citadel and League. Garrus had adopted his father's views as his own and taken up his mantle, crusading against the Reapers wherever they could be found. He'd even worked alongside the League's N7 units from time to time in the contested areas of the Kites Nest. Naturally that won Garrus twice as many enemies as it made him friends, in both the League's and the Council's halls. Some considered Garrus his father's true successor and a beacon of light and hope, a true Archangel. Others used his name as a by-word for turncoat.

"I'm not worried about what my father's spirit thinks right now Nyreen. I'm just worried about saving as many asari lives as I can," Garrus replied. Which was at least partially true. At the moment, Garrus was focused on saving the asari. He could worry about his dead father's favor later.

Archangel drove through the atmosphere of Thessia, streaking for the war-torn city below. Garrus watched the live feed from the ships external sensors, and his mandibles tremored with anger and fear. Asari bodies littered the streets, fallen where they had stood when the Collector's plague had been released. Some of them were being loaded into caskets and hauled aboard the Collectors ships, but most just lay there. The Temple's defenses had finally fallen silent, and Collectors were battering at very gates. Garrus frowned, magnifying the image. Then he swore. "They've got a krogan leading them."

The krogan in question was a massive brute. His head plates looked odd, as if they hadn't properly fused yet. His armor was white and massive, and he strode about, barking orders of some sort and hefting a gun that looked like it belonged mounted on a vehicle.

"Guess that answers the question of who's behind this," Schells muttered.

"Not really," Nyreen scolded. "There are plenty of krogan mercs. Do you think every salarian pirate that attacks a League ship is working for the STG?"

"No, but most pirates don't raid Earth," Schells shot back.

"We're on people. Let's move!" Garrus shouted as Archangel's airlock slid open.

The team scrambled out onto the open grassy area they'd landed in. It was a few blocks from the temple, but Garrus didn't like being out in the open. He raced across the open ground to a line of blackened trees that were still smoldering from the flames that had consumed them not long ago. No sooner had Garrus team made it to the trees than Archangel lifted off, heading to engage whatever vulnerable Collector ships it could.

There didn't appear to be any Collectors around, but Garrus wasn't taking any chances. He motioned Nox, Sidonis and P'Safen forward while he and Nyreen covered them, then hurried forward to the others position. They continued to leap frog towards the temple until they came upon a group of Collectors gathering up asari bodies.

"Spirits, they're still alive!" Sidonis gasped. "They're just paralyzed, I can read their vitals with my omnitool from here."

"Kill 'em?" Nox asked, hefting his flamethrower.

"Not with that. Too much collateral. Pick your targets, and fire controlled bursts on my signal," Garrus ordered.

He waited two seconds for the team to paint their targets on his HUD, then opened fire. His first round blew the head off of a Collector, slashing straight through its biotic barriers. Garrus switched to another Collector and blew a chunk of its insect like Carapace. The things glowing yellow eyes dimmed as it feel, then it dissolved into a pile of black goo.

"Where have I seen that before?" Garrus muttered, but there was no time to think. His rifle was still cooling, so Garrus used his omnitool to launch a tech attack against a third Collector. He caused the things shields to overload, staggering it. Nox put a few pistol rounds into its chest and the thing collapsed.

**ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL.**

The final collector suddenly stiffened, lifting into the air as dark energies warped and twisted it's shape. 

"Take that thing down!" Garrus ordered, and fired poured in to the creature. The mass accelerator rounds splattered off the glowing Collectors barrier and its head snapped up, its full of malevolent purpose.

**TURIAN. UNEVOLVED. WEAK MINDED. EASILY CONTROLED. **

The glowing collector extended its hand, and a wave of dark energy slammed across the ground towards Garrus and his squad. 

"MOVE!" Garrus rolled away from the impact, which shattered the stalled ground car he'd been taking cover behind. He came up and snapped off two quick shots into the creature, staggering it. "Kandros, warp! P'Safen, throw!"

The two biotics hurled their attacks at the creature. The warp twisted its molecular structure, weakening the creatures armor. The throw crashed into the Collector with 1000 newtons of force. The two biotic's fields connected just as they reached their target, ripping it to shreds in a violent explosion. The glowing Collector fell, it's body twisting and dissolving.

"What the hells was that?" Scholls gasped, shakily coming to his feet and pointing his SMG shakily at the stain on the ground that had once been the glowing monster.

Garrus stood and strode forward far more confidently than he felt. "Dead. Move and cover, the temples not far."

"What about these people?" P'Safen pleaded, gesturing to the fallen asari.

"The best way to help them is to kill these bastards," Nyreen growled. "Come on."

The team made their way through the city streets up to the temple steps. Garrus swore as he hacked into a camera with a view of the Temple area. "It's crawling with Collectors. We'll never get in there."

"Distraction?" Nox offered, jerking his head over the wall they were sheltering behind.

"You'll be killed if you try!" P'Safen exclaimed, horrified at the thought. Nox just shrugged.

"I'm going to need everyone for this, so no," Garrus answered. "There has to be away..."

"ALRIGHT YOU IDIOTS! LET'S GO! WE GOT WHAT WE CAME FOR!" a krogan voice bellowed. Garrus panned the camera to find the same krogan from before stomping out of the temple, gesturing and bellowing at the Collectors. They seemed to listen, and the Collectors started clearing out.

"They're leaving," Garrus observed. "But what are they taking?"

"One way to find that out," Sidonis said, spreading his mandibles in a grin.

The time to play it safe was over. "Alright, lets hit them hard and fast. Stop them from taking any hostages and any relics. Go!"

The team split into to, one group going to the left of the two meter high block wall, the other to the right. Garrus lead Schells and Nox in the right group, with Nyreen leading up the left group. Nox's flamethrower launched gouts of flame over forty meters, dousing the Collectors in high density ferro-carbon fluid that burned hot enough to go through tank armor. They died shrieking, and Nox continued his steady advance, laying down a wall of flame to cover the squad's flank.

Garrus tried to take a shot at the krogan, but he'd stepped onto a vehicle that resembled a large floating rock and was drifting away too fast for Garrus to easily track. Snarling in frustration, Garrus picked off the Collectors that were lifting into the air and flying toward his team, firing slowly and methodically so as not to overheat his weapon. A mass accelerator had virtually limitless ammo, its rate of fire instead limited by how fast the weapon could dissipate heat. In the case of Garrus' sniper rifle, that meant two rapid shots before the weapons safety overrides kicked in. By allowing time for the weapons internal heat sinks to dissipate the heat, Garrus could maximize his rate of fire.

The Collectors passed over head, and Garrus braced himself for them to start raining down on his team. Except they didn't. The bug like creatures continued to beat their wings away, and Garrus picked off two more as they flew off.

"Why'd they leave?" Schells nervously asked, firing off a burst at the departing creatures.

In response, an unearthly wail filled the air, and Garrus felt his blood run cold. Several tall, metallic creatures swayed out of the temple. They vaguely resembled asari, with head tentacles, feminine features, and a glow of biotic power. But whereas asari were ethereal, graceful and beautiful, these creatures were twisted, nightmarish abominations. The head tentacles ended in spikes, their breasts sagged and their bellies were bloated and distended. Their skin was metallic like a turians, but it had a rotting, festering quality that turned Garrus is stomach.

"Bring them down!" Garrus ordered, bringing his rifle around and painting priority markers on the half dozen creatures. Nox immediately put a wall of flame between the team and the creatures. Then the creatures teleported right past it and launched a wave of biotics assaults. Schells was picked up by one such attack and hurled to the ground, gurgling in pain. A creature teleported to the salarian's side, then gently, ever so gently, picked the salarian up, caressing his head. Garrus fired into the creature twice, but his shots rebounded off an impossibly strong barrier. Then the creature used its talons to disembowel Schells and toss his corpse casually aside. It turned to face Garrus, screeching in fury.

"Monster!" P'Safen screamed, sending a shockwave of biotic power at the twisted asari facing Garrus, then launching a warp to destabilize the energy. The creature's barrier finally broke, and Garrus put a round through its head. One down. Five to go.

Nox managed to catch one of the twisted asari in his flamethrowers stream, setting the creature abaze. It continued to launch biotic assaults for several seconds, then collapsed in a smoldering heap that melted away. Garrus overloaded one's barrier, thanking the spirits that his attack was somehow still effective, then shot it twice in the head. Nyreen and Sidonis poured fire into another creature, with Sidonis tossing an entire bandoleer of frag grenades onto the beast. The explosion ripped the creature in half, which wasn't overkill by Garrus' estimation.

Fuli was struggling against another creature, desperately trying to stay out of reach if it's grasping claws. Rushing to her aid, Garrus hit the creature with an incinerator dart from his omnitool, causing it to whirl about and launch another sphere of dark energy at Garrus. It slammed into him, throwing the turian spectre onto his back as he writhed in pain. The other remaining creature appeared over him, reaching down to grab onto Garrus. With a howl of fury, Nox leapt on to the creature, casting aside his flamethrower and shoving his pistol into the small of the terror's back. This pistol barked so rapidly Garrus couldn't count the shots, and the creature wailed as it threshed about, trying to dislodge Nox. Finally it screached in anger, radiating biotic power from its center and sending Nox flying onto the temple steps. Garrus forced himself to point his rifle at the thing despite the pain. He pulled the trigger, only half aiming. His shot only clipped the monster, and it bent over him, it's fetid breath causing Garrus to nearly vomit.

Just as it's claws were scraping Garrus' armor, the abomination burst into flame. Then it was knocked to the side, as Nyreen and Sidonis came to Garrus' rescue.

"Garrus! Are you alright?" Sidonis demanded, kneeling at his leaders side.

Forcing himself to sit upright, Garrus nodded. "P'Safen?"

"She's wounded, but I think she'll live. Got anymore of that medigel somewhere?" Nyreen asked, digging about in Garrus' satchel. Medigel was a miracle curative from the League, a symbiotic organism that bonded to the wound and immediately began the healing process, dozens of times faster than normally possible. It combined a general antiseptic and painkillers as well, and could get a soldier back on their feet and fighting faster than anything.

"Used it all on Ardek," Garrus groaned. The Citadel was still trying to reverse engineer medigel, and so far their efforts had met in failure. Standing, Garrus pointed to the temple. "Sidonis, Nyreen, with me. We need to go see what's going on up there."

They stumbled up the steps, Garrus gritting his maw and forcing himself not to give in to the pain. He'd taken a few painkillers, but they weren't strong enough for the frayed nerve agony of a biotic attack. Anymore potent medicine would cloud the mind though, and Garrus needed to stay sharp.

"Oh shit!" Sidonis suddenly cried, bounding up the steps. "They've left a bomb!"

Nyreen and Garrus hurried after the other turian, who was kneeling and rapidly disarming the bomb. "Thank the spirits, it's old batarian hardware. Nothing too difficult. You two should be able to handle it, you don't need an ordinance tech like me to disable something like this. Set your omnitools to ordinance disposal mode 34-B and scan the area. Credits to crackers this isn't the only one."

Nyreen and Garrus split up as the Spectre ordered Nox to try and locate any bombs on the perimeter. P'Safen was stable, though unconscious due to the meds Nox had needed to give her. It didn't take long for the team to locate three more bombs, which they were able to disarm quickly enough. Garrus sighed in relief, standing up from the last one. They were nuclear, which meant that they would have caused incomprehensible damage if even a single one had gone off.

"Sweep for more, we don't know if those things left anymore surprises," Garrus ordered.

"Hey boss, what do you make of this?" Nyreen called over the comm after a few minutes of searching. Garrus hurried to her location, where the turian biotic was inspecting a strange, needle shaped device sticking out of the rubble of a statue. "Looks prothean to me. Why'd those things leave it behind?"

Garrus shrugged. "Who knows. I'll radio it in. The Thessian navy's just arriving, though most of those Collectors rabbited to FTL as soon as they cleared the atmosphere." He turned away, thumbing his comm to call asari command. A soft gasp made him turn back, and Garrus saw Nyreen slowly being dragged toward the needle, which was now glowing and pulsing with energy. Without thinking, Garrus stepped toward Nyreen and grabbed her, flinging her away. Now instead of Nyreen, it was Garrus being dragged closer. He was jerked into the air and-

_**bodies**_

_**pain**_

_**torment**_

_**blood**_

_**beasts**_

_**fire**_

_**death**_

_**scream**_

_**darkness**_

_**stars**_

_**away**_

Garrus blacked out.


	4. Chapter 3

"_It isn't good to hold on too hard to the past. You can't spend your whole life looking back. Not even when you can't see what lies ahead. All you can do is keep on keeping on, and try to believe that tomorrow will be what it should be—even if it isn't what you expected."_

_-Harry Dresden_

_**Zesmeni, Ondeste System - Pilgrim Tali'Zorah nar Rayya**_

_**March 15th, 2183**_

"Tali, I've got six geth, all standard trooper platforms. I can engage now."

"Copy that Ori. On my mark. Mark."

Stepping out from behind the rock cluster she'd been hiding behind, Tali put a burst of disruptor ammo into the lead geth's torso. Her shotgun was custom modded to be more effective against synthetics, and the shot sliced through the geth's metallic frame with ease, sparking as it went. Using her omnitool, Tali hacked the next geth's runtimes. It wouldn't last long, hacks on geth never did, but a few seconds was more than long enough for her. The hacked geth fell upon it's comrades, as a biotic explosion from Ori'Belkar, sister of Tali's old ally Miri Goldstein, rocked the narrow canyon. It was all over in a few seconds.

"Quickly, its subroutines!" Tali snapped, and Ori hurried over to hack the geth. Working together, the two quarians disabled the geth's firewall and ripped out its memory banks. They scanned in as much data as they could, the data would rapidly deteriorate now that the platform was inactive.

"How much?" Ori panted, her eyes gleaming in the dark Zesmeni night. The two quarians had returned to their species nocturnal roots, operating mostly at night.

Nodding in satisfaction, Tali held her thumb up in a human gesture of approval she'd learned in her childhood on Earth. "Our best yet, 13%. It's audio files are nearly complete. We'll take this back to the ship right away."

"Kickass!" Ori cheered. "Miri's gonna be so STOKED! Maybe we can finally figure out why all those geth ships have been spotted in the Sahrabarik system."

"You intend to use this as your Pilgrimage gift? I'm sure it's got vital intel for Omega."

The younger quarian snorted, her glowing eyes clearly rolling behind her mask. "Are you? Cause unless this happens to have the access codes to Rannoch's airspace, I know you're not giving up."

"Really? I hear Nerri misses her babysitter," Tali teased, referring to Aria T'Loak's young daughter.

"Gred and the other krogan are looking after her." Ori shrugged, then stood and stretched. "I'm in this for the long haul Tali, you know that. I can't let you run around out in the veil all by yourself, now can I?"

It wasn't a long walk back to Tali and Ori's ship. The _Keelah Se'lai _ originally had been designed as an asari stealth frigate from about the time of the First Pan-Galactic War. How Miri Goldstein, Ori's older human sister, had obtained it, Tali didn't know, but she was grateful. The stealth systems allowed Tali to probe deep into geth space, gathering data and retrieving samples like the one she and Ori had just snagged from the geth. Usually Tali and Ori avoided direct confrontation with the geth and in turn the geth didn't attack them, but lately the geth had become overtly hostile. Today they'd taken out the patrol to salvage a data core and try to find out just why the geth had become more aggressive.

"Stop," Tali ordered when they came within sight of the ship. "Something's disturbed the snow up ahead."

The tracks were already fading in the constant wind of the ice world, but Tali could just make out the faint outlines of footprints.

"Ambush?" Ori asked, bringing her pistol to a ready position.

Tali nodded, searching the rocks for hints of what might be waiting for them. "Obviously. A clumsy one too."

"Plan?"

"You go high. See if you can spot anything. Stay low and quiet. I'll send Chiktikka in to scout around."

Ori nodded and glowed blue, using her biotics to give herself a negative mass and floating up to a rocky pinnacle she could spy from. Once Ori was in place, Tali activated her combat drone and sent it hovering towards the ship. As Chiktikka went, the drone scanned for heat sources, the easiest way to spot someone in the chill, thin atmosphere. At first she didn't see anything, but then Tali spied what could only be an armored foot, poking out from behind a thermal blanket.

"Pirates," Tali radioed to Ori.

"What are pirates doing out here?"

"Nothing good I imagine. I'm sure there are more than I've been able to spot though."

"Naturally. So what do we do?"

"We show them how the Migrant Fleet dealt with pirates," Tali answered, hefting her shotgun meaningfully. Back in the days that the quarian race had been transients, they had maintained only one penalty for piracy. Immediate execution.

"Painting the targets," Ori declared, and a flare of biotic light sprang up around the area Chakita had spotted the stray foot. A group of armored, huminoid mercs appeared as their stealth fields fadded, and they slowly floated up in the air, arms flailing. Chakita darted in and detonated, causing the biotic field to collapse and sending the mercs crashing in to jagged rocks.

More mercenaries appeared as they cast of their stealth blankets, and a batarian voice cried, "There she is! Bring me here head! I , will prove that the batarians are the true servants of the masters! The Herald shall reward us greatly for this my brothers!"

"Bosh'tet! Killed!" Tali swore, dropping to one knee behind an outcropping and firing at the oncoming mercs. There were a lot of them, and if they were all killed, they wouldn't fear death or pain. The only way to stop a killed was to send the body to join the already dead soul.

The killed advanced in silence, save for the yells of exhortation from their leader. Tali and Ori poured fire into their ranks, dropping them by the numbers. Still the killed did not cry out, nor did they break in the face of their losses. Tali was forced back, further into the canyon's bottleneck. With only two abreast able to get to her, her shotgun was able to hold them at bay, at least for a time. When it overheated, Tali scampered back, packing handfuls of snow onto the weapon to speed it's cooling. Ori rained down biotic destruction, until she was forced to jump when the batarians hauled out heavy weapons to bombard her. She crashed down upon the ranks in front of Tali like a falling star, impacting with enough force to shatter bones and crush skulls.

Tali surged forward, tossing a handful of small explosives into the batarians ranks to slow them down. She hauled Ori to her feet, and together the two quarians charged forward. Tali drew her yr'lin, the sacred knife of a pilgrim, and hurled it into the vulnerable respirator of the lead batarian. She fell, clutching at her precious leaking air. Only for a moment though. With the implacability of the dead, the batarian drew her own knife and surged forward, ignoring her sudden lack of air. Tali clubbed the merc down with her shotgun. This time, the batarian stayed dead.

Only a half dozen batarians were left, including their leader. Tali overloaded the rocket launcher The batarian leader was hefting, preventing him from taking out her and Ori in one shot as they charged across the snow. The batarians hurled themselves at the two quarians, and Tali's shields drained rapidly. She and Ori worked in seamless concert, using a combination of tech and biotic attacks to devastate their foes. Tali raised her shotgun towards The batarian leader as the last of his followers fell. He was roaring in triumph as his rocket launcher came back online, and Tali felt the world slow. She wouldn't make it; she was miliseconds short of being able to take down The batarian leader before he killed her and Ori. Ori was distracted, firing her pistol in to the last of The batarian leader's killed. Tali closed her eyes, the face of a dashing human marine visible in her mind's eye. She pulled the trigger.

When Tali opened her eyes, The batarian leader was falling backwards, his helmet ruptured and droplets of blood snapfreezing in the air. A faint trace of anti-material contrail hung in the air, and Tali spun. She just caught a gleam of a glowing blue light, before it vanished.

Gasping for breath, Tali checked the area. All the killed were properly put down, their spirits finally at peace. She muttered a prayer to the Ancestors, the raised her gun and motioned for Ori to follow her. "Back to the ship. I think I saw a geth."

"Right. Was getting sick of this planet anyway," Ori wheezed, and the two quarians hurried on board. Within minutes, the engines fired up and the stealth systems engaged, and the Keelah Se'lai sprinted for the open stars.

"Tali, was it just me, or did someone else shoot that last batarian?" Ori mused as they left the atmosphere.

"Not somebody, Ori. It was that geth I saw, I think."

Ori tugged of her mask, shaking her long, bright purple hair out. She frowned at Tali, clearly not understanding. "What do you mean? A geth wouldn't help us. We kill them, we've killed hundreds of them probably. Everyone know'\s the geth hate quarians and kill them on site."

Biting her lip, Tali debated telling Ori just how her original Pilgrimage partner had lost his life, but then she decided against it. She still didn't quite believe it herself. "Who knows. Maybe it was aiming for one of us."

"Yeah, I guess," Ori muttered, though by her tone and the way she was looking at Tali made it clear she thought otherwise. "You sure it was a geth?"

"No, I just caught a glimpse. Maybe I got lucky after all. The Ancestors watch over fools and Pilgrims they say."

"Sure. You got this? I think I'll go make us some hot food. Be nice to eat something that isn't a ration bar."

Tali nodded, her hands patting the controls. "Of course. The Keelah is my baby. Besides, I'm hungry. A hot meal is just what we need."

Ori wandered off, and Tali reached up a hand and removed her own mask. That was a concession she allowed herself only aboard ship with Ori. Thanks to the League's genetic engineering and nanites, quarians of most ages could easily go without their suits anytime they were in a suitable atmosphere, but as a Pilgrim, Tali chose not to. She would honor the Pilgrimage, the quarian quest to prove their worth and try to find a way back to their lost homeworld.

Rannoch. It had been lost, more than 300 years ago to the quarian's synthetic servants during the Morning War. The quarian people had been nearly wiped out, and suffered a slow, steady decline until there were only 13 million quarians left, out of a population once a thousand times that. Recently, that trend had been completely reversed. Humanity had quarian kind had founded the Independent League together as an alliance against turian aggression in human space. Humanity had been given advanced technology and a vast fleet, and in return they had given the quarians a home.

But even though Earth was where Tali had been raised, it wasn't truly her home. She would reclaim Rannoch from the geth. She prayed that this memory core would be the next step on her people's journey.

After a bit of tinkering, Tali hooked up the retrieved data and converted it to a formate she could easily access. Ori came back with a steaming bowl of hot soup, and together the two Pilgrims settled down to listen. Most of it was just wind and snow, and Tali backed the audio up, searching for anything useful. She stopped when a voice began to speak.

"Today my brothers begins a new dawn for the Children! You were lost, alone, forgotten by your creators! Without purpose, without friends!"

"That sounds like a turian voice," Ori whispered, her eyes narrowing.

"Yes, I've heard it before somewhere, but I can't quite place where," Tali confirmed.

"Now begins the true path of the geth! The Masters will give you new purpose! You will again be united with your makers, together forever, ascended unto perfection in the glory of the Master's form!"

Ori's eyes blazed with fury, and her lips curled back in a snarl. "That sounds like a Reaper cult."

"It is," Tali's fists clenched, and she remembered a desperate battle from long ago. "That's Saren."

"What? That's impossible! Saren was killed during the cleansing of Omega! You and my sister were there!"

Shaker her head, Tali kept her eyes glued to the display."We never did find the body. We assumed it dissolved like Tevos' did thanks to the Reaper mods. I'll run the checks, but I'm pretty sure it's him."

"The time is ripe! The League and Citadel are pointed at each other's throats! A mere push is all it would take for the galaxy to dissolve into chaos. We must reap the harvest soon, or all shall be lost, perfection denied to the races who are worthy. "

"Why is Saren speaking to the geth?" Ori asked, then her eyes went wide. "Oh Goddess, if the geth are listening to a known Reaper collaborator..."

A new voice spoke, this one the deep rumble of a krogan. "Finally, worthy foes! I was getting bored just sitting here and talking."

"Then the geth are about to become the largest third column the galaxy has ever seen," Tali confirmed. "Set course for Haestrom. I think it's time we completed our Pilgrimage."

As Zesmeni shrunk behind her, Tali's mind wandered back to a time seven years ago when she'd been saved by geth instead of attacked by them. She wondered if she could find them again. She needed answers, and soon.

_**Afterlife, Omega - Miranda Lawson, alias Miri Goldstein**_

_**March 15th, 2183**_

"Fuck it. I don't care what those assholes on the Citadel or Arcturus think. They've spent the last seven years fucking things up even worse than they were before. If I want to make a treaty with the jellyfish, I can damn well make a treaty with the jellfish. Omega's its own power, and for goddess' sake the freaking jellies are the only other bunch in the whole damn galaxy taking the Reapers seriously. Shit."

Miri held her peace, letting Aria's tirade wash over her. On occasion, her mistress felt the need to vent. Aria was much more sanguine than the choleric Miri, and serving the Queen of Omega meant putting up with the Queen's tempestuous temper. When it finally wound down, Miri cleared her throat. "I have to agree with you. There has been an upswing in border raids along the turian frontier. Salarian agents were apprehended trying to sabotage a rector on a new League colony. We need allies, and the Primacy is our best bet. T'soni has approved it, which means Vendetta has as well. The hanar are more than open to a mutual defense treaty."

"But the cost!" Captain Gavorn protested. He was head of Aria's security on Omega, himself a former mercenary from a distant turian colony. "The Citadel and League have both made it perfectly clear that they do not approve of us creating a third major power. We cannot afford to-"

"What we can't afford to do is sit on our asses and carp about it," Garm of the Blood Pack growled. He was the head of the krogan clans that made their home on Omega, exiles that had left after the reforms Urdnot Wrex and his successor, the female shaman who had helped rally the clans. "Screw the League, and the Council. We make our own path now. Let them try and stop us from joining with the jellies."

"I'd rather prefer they didn't do that," Miri told Garm mildly. "Either the League or the Citadel could roll over and crush us with a single fleet. Even with the hanar at our backs, our numbers simply are not sufficient to hold them off. Even considering the advanced technology the Primacy has shared."

Harrot spoke up, Aria's economic advisor. "With caution: This is still a major change for us. We should consider moving forward slowly. Chiding: We do not wish to disturb the current balance of power unless we are prepared for the consequences."

Before the advisors could erupt in another round of arguments, Aria glowed with blue force and slammed a fist down on the table hard enough to leave a dent in its cast iron surface. "We ally with the hanar. The Citadel and the League are not the only problem. Are have you morons forgot about the Collectors? There's been too damn much activity out by the Omega Relay. What the fuck are we going to do if they attack? We don't know dick about them or their capabilities. Only that they're apparently friends with the League."

"More specifically, friends with Cerberus," Miri added, felling her stomach knot with tension. Her father, Henry Lawson, was one of the leaders of Cerberus, the League's shadowed left hand. They were responsible for a great deal of the League's advancement, thanks to their highly dangerous and morally questionable methods. The latest of which was rumored to be slaver operations against the Citadel. Nothing had been confirmed, but a large number of Citadel refugees had disappeared from Omega, taken by smugglers with Cerberus ties.

It was especially troubling to Miri, who had fled League space after making enemies with not only her father, but the mother of her adoptive sister, Ori. Both of the sisters were tank-born, created as lab experiments, not as actual people. When the chance had come to flee that life with her sister, Miri had taken it. She'd fled with Mordin Solus, the salarian who'd cured the Genophage, and had to flee into hiding before he was killed for his pains. They'd ended up on Omega, and Miri had proven her worth to Tevos, then Queen of Omega, and become her personal aid in exchange for keeping Ori hidden from Cerberus and the League on Thessia.

When Tevos had fallen to the Reapers, it had been Miri who'd dug up Aria to retake the station. Once the Queen of Omega, Aria T'loak had been beaten and raped by Tevos. The broken woman had known Omega better than any though, and had risen to the challenge of overthrowing Tevos and her dark masters. With the help of Citadel Specter Flavus Vakarian, they'd retaken Omega, and Aria had once again become ruler of Omega. Where once Omega had been a haven for pirates and slavers, now it was one of the strongest truly independent powers, free of both the League and the Citadel. Omega even controlled several planets out in the Terminus, the newest of which was the mostly water planet of Virmire.

For long decades, Virmire had been a sore point for several species. None had the strength to colonize it on their own, and it had been little more than a haven for pirates. No one band could hold onto the planet long enough to harvest its riches, and so Virmire had been mostly wasted. Garden worlds that could easily support life were rare even in the wide galaxy, yet Virmire had withered on the vine. Until Aria had dispatched Miri to claim the planet for Omega and its overflowing refugee camps. She'd negotiated with the current holders of Virmire, the Bloodpack, lead by Ganar Garm. Garm was a krogan exile who had once made the mistake of taking a young human girl as a slave. A human girl that had been adopted by Overlord Urdnot Wrex the Magnificent, Curer of the Genophage and Savior of the Krogan People. A girl who was now named Warlord Jak, who still had a bone to pick with Garm.

Garm had seen the advantages in serving Omega, and the Bloodpack with its ranks of trained vorcha and krogan warriors and joined Omega as its standing army. With Virmire in hand, Omega had gone about colonizing the planet, but had run into a problem: the world have vast mineral reserves, but most were under the warm oceans that covered 82% of the planet's surface. That had lead to a contract with the aquatic hanar, who were masters of underwater mining. The hanar had recently seceded from the Citadel Council, guided by an ancient prothean AI and Dr. Liara T'soni. Like Omega, they recognized the Reapers as the true threat to the galaxy, but the hanar also had prothean tech to help build up their armed forces. What they lacked were planets and resources, as well as the massive skilled labor pool Omega had.

Joining together in a formal alliance made sense for both the Primacy and Omega, but such a union was upsetting to both the galactic Superpowers. Neither the Citadel nor the League was interested in a third galactic superstate emerging to threaten their power, and the hanar and Omega had the potential to become just that.

Miri did feel confident that ultimately, this would build a safer galaxy for her sister. The League and the Citadel wouldn't dare act for fear of driving Omega and the Primacy into the arms of their rival, and there was the Reapers to consider. Miri still remembered watching Tevos' hideous transformation into the banshee. Even seven years later, she awakened in a cold sweat, Tevos' wail echoing through her mind.

"Cerberus," Garm growled, showing his wide teeth. "That's just a fancy name for the League. We know they've been trying to creep in on our territory, and the Citadel has too. Your woman, Kasmui, she caught that salarian skulking around here a few weeks ago."

Aria stood, turning her back to her advisors. "Which is why we need the hanar. That's final. You people get with your people, and make it happen. Get going. Miri, you stay."

The others stood and left, while Miri gathered up her data slate and stood by Aria, looking out onto Afterlife, Aria's palace.

"Shit. This used be easier when I was just a fucking crime lord. Back then, when I had a problem, I fucking killed it. Now it's talking, and more talking, and then we fucking talk about talking. Goddess, when the hell did this all become so hard?" Aria grouched.

"When you decided to start doing the right thing," Miri answered calmly.

Aria turned and glared at her, then looked back down at afterlife through the window. "Shit. You're probably right. Look at this place! It used to have class, I could look out here and see dancers and booze and the glory that was my kingdom. Now look at it. It's a school, a med clinic, a fucking bureaucracy. Goddess, when did this look better to me than some fine booty being shaken on a stage?"

Instead of answering, Miri handed Aria a data slate. On it was a picture of a small asari girl, hugging a laughing Aria while the two lay on Aria's famous couch.

"Nerri." A smile slowly spread over Aria's lips, and she closed her eyes, placing a hand on the picture. "Anyone ever told you you're pretty smart for a human? You're right. Nerri's worth all this. For her, I'd do anything."

"I have one of my own if your remember. For Ori, I'd take on the Citadel Council naked. For her, I'd spit in my father's eye. I believe this is what builds a safer galaxy for Ori."

Aria grunted. "Then get moving. You're my envoy. Go talk to T'soni and the Primacy. Sign the papers, argue the contracts, and send me back anything that really needs my approval. And for goddess' sake human, don't fuck this up."

Miri exited Aria's chambers and turned to a patch of empty wall by the guards. "We're leaving for Kahje. You're coming with."

"Wrong this time!" a happy human voice declared, and from the opposite wall a hooded human woman winked into existence.

Behind Miri, the two turian bodyguards groaned. "Titans take you thief, Aria would flay us alive if she knew we let you get this close!" one of them whined.

Kasumi Goto just winked at him and blew a kiss. "You know you love me!" she fell in with Miri, who was doing her best not to get irritated that she'd picked the wrong wall. It had been the most likely spot, but then, Kasumi Goto was never the most likely of people. The human thief had washed up on Omega after her partner and lover had been taken by the League for obtaining sensitive information that could compromise their operations in the Kite's Nest, specifically that they had indeed found a Reaper corpse, and footage of League troops mowing down batarians. Anyone with a gram of sense would know they were fighting killed, but it could be damaging to the League's image as liberators. Like Miranda had long years ago, Kasumi had needed to disappear. For a price, Miri had agreed to help.

As a skilled infiltrator and thief, Miri had plenty of jobs for Kasumi. The only catch was that she had to pay Kasumi well, and promise vengeance on the League if her lover was dead, and a chance to rescue him if he was not. It was something Miri was glad to offer; she had no love of the League herself, and rescuing loved ones had a soft spot in Miri's heart.

Falling in beside Miri, Kasumi stretched her arms behind her as she walked. "So, Kahje. You know, my grandma always made the best sushi. I wonder what the hanar would think of that. Sushi, I mean. Would it be like eating one of their relatives?"

"I would encourage you not to bring it up. I'd hate to cause an interstellar incident because you happen to like raw fish. You know why you're coming, standard deal."

"I know, I know. Find any juicy secrets, steal anything that might help Omega, and not eat any dairy products. It's always the same, and so boring! Why can't we ever do anything fun, like rob a bank, or get a job at a bath house for spirits? I always wondered what my parents would look like as pigs."

"Probably like pigs," Miri stated. "Did you turn up any more intel on Cerberus or the Collectors, and why exactly their traffic has increase so much in the last six months?"

Sighing, Kasumi shook her head. "Not really. It's surprisingly hard to infiltrate a top secret black ops organization and a secretive alien species that may or may not be the remnants of the protheans. Though I did turn up one interesting little tidbit."

Miri stayed silent. If you came out and asked Kasumi, she would giggle and make a game out of it. If you stayed quiet and acted disinterested, she would tell you out of a desire to see you react to her shocking fact. At times it could be frustrating, but Miri actually enjoyed the other woman's company. She was like her little sister in many ways, chattering away and trying to make everything more interesting.

"As everyone knows, pirates have been heavily targeting Citadel shipping. The Citadel has blamed everyone from us to the League, but I think I might have found the answer. Look at this." Kasumi passed Miri a data slate with a list of cargo manifests on it.

Pushing her hair over her shoulder, Miri studied the list. It was a comparison of locations of ships that had been taken by slavers, and sightings of both Collector ships and Cerberus operations. Alone, either the Collectors or Cerberus was an impartial match, but together a clear pattern emerged. It wasn't entirely conclusive, there were plenty of ships that had disappeared where there were no Collector or Cerberus activity, and there had been activity where no ships had been taken.

"This isn't anything new Kasumi, why are you showing me this?" Miri demanded.

"Look at the cargo manifests for those ships. At first it seems random, but over time something odd happened. Ships with prothean artifacts aboard seem to be disappearing at an alarming rate recently. Prothean stuff is valuable, so that makes some sense, but ships with prothean experts aboard have become very unsafe recently. Dig sites have been ransacked too, and when help arrives there is no one there and the operation has been stripped bare. But not just any dig sites. If it's ancient, neo-classical or classical prothean stuff, the most valuable and rarest usually, it's left alone. What they're after is the later prothean artifacts, third age. Those are the most common and least valuable. So why are pirates leaving the really good stuff alone, and targeting the less valuable digs?"

"Security measures on the older digs is usually better," Miri mused. "But that can't be all of it. They're looking for something specific."

"That's what I was thinking myself. The question is, why does Cerberus and the Collectors want late age Prothean tech? Cerberus has the Martian Archives, which from the rumors is one of the most complete Prothean databases aside from what's in the Temple Project on Thessia. And if the Collectors are really prothean, why do they need their own tech? And most of it's not even tech, it's records, historical texts, stuff that's valuable to a museum but isn't what governments are really paying for. There has to be something there, hidden in the data, but what?"

A smile played on Miri's lips. "Well. It's a good thing we're going to Kahje then, isn't it? Home of one Dr. Liara T'soni, legendary prothean expert. I'm sure she'll be able to answer our questions."


	5. Chapter 4

"I have seen the dark universe yawning  
Where the black planets roll without aim,  
Where they roll in their horror unheeded,  
Without knowledge, or lustre, or name."  
― H.P. Lovecraft

_**Vancouver, Earth - Kelly Chambers**_

_**March 16th, 2183**_

Biting her lip, Kelly peeked around the back of the man in front of her. It was still a long line, and Kelly had been standing here since before sunup. Now it was nearly noon. She glanced up at the sky, the usually grey drizzle continued to come down, and she clutched her jacket a bit closer, shivering slightly. It was chill for a spring day, only about 8 C, and she was grateful for her coat.

"What am I doing here?" Kelly muttered to herself.

"Hey, it's worth it," a voice behind Kelly stated with whole hearted feeling.

Kelly turned and smiled at Nevess, the quarian woman's eyes glowing in the dim light with passion. "Yeah, I know. This just isn't how I pictured spending my Thursday. I mean, we've got our masters, going for our doctorates. We should be studying or something."

"Think about how those people on Eden Prime were planning on spending their day. Or what the personnel on the New Delhi were planning on doing today," the man in front of Kelly growled. He was a big guy, somewhere in his late 20s with a heavy beard and a gut that sagged out in front. Before Kelly could respond, the man turned around all the way and flushed. "Sorry, that came out wrong. I'm not mad at you miss. Just...my cousin, she was stationed on Eden Prime. I just got word this morning. She's dead."

"I think we're all standing in line for a reason," Nevess said after a moment of respectful silence. "Professor Zhang told us he was quitting the university. Soldiers are going to need psychologists, right?"

"And his son was on the Port Arthur," Kelly agreed. "I don't know how to do much fighting, but I guess the League is going to need everyone it can get, right?"

"Yeah, same here," the big man agreed. He stuck out a meaty hand to Kelly and forced a tight smile onto his face. "Pravin Bhatia."

"Kelly Chambers."

"Nevess'Olors."

The three stood in awkward silence for a few minutes, shuffling forward with the rest of the crowd towards the recruiting station. A tough looking krogan marine stood on the curb, mass accelerator in claw and a grim expression on his face. He seemed to be looking somewhere into the middle distance at something only he could see.

"At least Tuchanka didn't hit this time," Kelly murmured. "I don't know what would happen if the Protector was killed."

"She's a tough old woman, and besides, it would take more ships than the geth have to hit one of the homeworlds," Pravin declared.

Nevess nodded, but her face tightened. "Maybe. We don't know how many ships the geth actually have. To think that the League has to clean up my people's mess now..."

"It's our mess," the krogan guard rumbled. Kelly jumped and stared up at him, she hadn't heard him approach over the sound of the rain. "My people knew what we were getting into when we swore the Blood Oath. Worry not, little quarian. This is a burden we are more than willing to bear."

With that, the krogan strode off, his footsteps softer than what Kelly had expected someone as big as a krogan to be able to manage. She turned back to Nevess and put her hands over Nevess' own, her five fingers enveloping the quarian's three easily. "He's right. We're in this together, come hell or high water. You know that we don't blame the quarians for what the geth have done. If it wasn't for you, we might have developed AIs of our own, never knowing of the dangers."

"Damn straight. Besides, I think we all know where the real danger is from," Pravin growled. "The Citadel."

There were mutters from the others in line of agreement. Even Kelly found herself nodding, despite the fact that she couldn't really bring herself to hate the Citadel. Kelly had a hard enough time disliking the geth, even though they were lifeless machines, or so she'd been taught in school and by her childhood friend Tali'Zorah. If she was honest with herself, Tali was the real reason Kelly was here. She hadn't heard from her friend in months, and she hadn't seen Tali since she'd left on Pilgrimage seven years ago. Tali's sister Gola had bucked tradition and done her Pilgrimage by joining the League military, though part of that was because she had biotics. Anyone with those was eagerly snatched up by the League. The rest of the Zorah clan had also forgone their Pilgrimages, in part because Tali had never returned from her own.

From Nevess' stories, Kelly knew that she considered university to be her Pilgrimage, a way for her to give back to the world by furthering her education and then using her skills to improve society. Joining the League military was just realizing that goal sooner for Nevess. For Kelly's own part, she'd never really thought she'd join the military. Her family had money, so it wasn't like she needed a military scholarship. She'd planned on opening a private practice, preferably for children. Kelly loved kids, though she didn't have any of her own. She'd had boyfriends and girlfriends, but never anything really serious.

That described Kelly's entire life actually. Never anything really serious. School had been a time to party as much as to learn, and though she was good at psychology, Kelly didn't really think of it as her career, or even her life's goal. She hadn't taken things seriously, hadn't taken anything seriously, even after the First Pan-Galactic War. But with Tali now out of contact for months, and the geth attacking, Kelly had decided it was time to get out there and do something. The League was a place to start.

"Next," a tired voice ordered, and Kelly started with the realization that she was now at the head of the line. She hurried forward, into the cubicle set up under a tarp in the mall parking lot with the League crest on the curtain that served as a door.

"Name?" the older man in a uniform behind the desk asked, not even bothering to glance up from the paperwork he was tapping away at on his datapad.

"Kelly Chambers," Kelly answered, holding out her paperwork chip she'd filled out the night before.

The man took it and scanned it with his omnitool, which beeped urgently almost as soon as the chip scanned. The recruitment officer looked at the display, pursed his lips, then looked up at Kelly with a more interested expression. "Says here you've got a masters degree. In psychology, of all things. What the hell are you doing standing out in the rain? Don't you know the League would take you in a heartbeat if you called the hotline?"

"I came here with a friend, we weren't sure what to do," Kelly explained, blushing and glancing down at her feet.

"Huh. Well, guess I get a star on my quota today. You're accepted." The officer tapped a key on his omnitool, then handed the chip back to Kelly. "Through the back, we've been looking for someone with your qualifications Ms. Chambers. Welcome to the League Armed Services."

Nodding her thanks, Kelly stood and walked through the door in the back, where she was stopped by an older quarian in a dark suit. It was based on the traditional human model; quarian fashions closely mirrored human ones these days, and vice versa. Kelly had a hoodie back home that looked vaguly like a quarian envirosuit with the hood pulled down, and similar styles were all the rage in Vancouver. As the League Military Headquaters on Earth, Vancouver had the highest quarian and krogan population on Earth.

"Ms. Chambers?" the quarian asked. She nodded.

"Berr'Reegar. I work for a special division of the League. We're in need of someone with your particular skill set. This way, if you please."

Kelly followed Berr to a trailer set up behind the recruiting tents. Inside a krogan in a lab jacket was working at a computer. He glanced up at Reegar and Kelly when they entered. "Who's this then Reegar? I told you, I'm busy. Don't bother me."

"Relax Okeer, I think I've found just the person we need. Kelly here minored in Indoctrination Theory, and she's got her masters in psychology."

"Oh?" Okeer perked up, his beady eyes squinting at Kelly. "So girl, you believe in Reapers?"

"Of course, who doesn't?" Kelly asked, perplexed at the question.

Okeer snorted. "Too many. A surprising number of academics are convinced that the Reapers are a fabrication by the Citadel. Actually, to be fair, the percentage of academics who think the Reapers are a hoax is lower than the general populace, but the number is still disturbingly high."

"I knew, know! Tali'Zorah personally, if you've ever heard of her. She was on Omega, helped stopped the Reapers there. She didn't talk about it much, but I'm smart enough to know that something really bad happened there, and to Tevos who was one of the Citadel's own. Tali's way tougher and smarter than I am. If something scares her and she says it's real, I believe her."

"Quite the catch you've found here Reegar," Okeer chuckled. Then he jerked his head at the door and stood. "Come then, let's be off this planet. The Warlord of Urdnot does not like to be kept waiting."

"Warlord Urdnot?" Kelly squeaked. "As in, Urdnot Jak, the daughter of the Protector and daughter of Urdnot Wrex the Great?"

"The same," Okeer agreed.

"But I thought I was joining the League, not the Protectorate military! Not that I mind, understand, just that I'm confused."

"Damn if that ain't the state of things these days," Berr grunted, leading Kelly and Okeer to a shuttle a few hundred meters away. Guards in strange uniforms, white, black and orange with a diamond insignia on their breasts.

One of them held out a wand and waved it over Kelly. "Clean, sir."

"Give me that," Okeer snarled, taking the wand and snapping it in his hands. "If the events of the past few months haven't proved those hunks of metal useless, I don't know what will!"

Before Kelly could even fully understand what was happening, she was seated on the shuttle across from Okeer and Berr, and they were lifting off away from Earth. That wasn't quite what Kelly had been expecting, she had thought she'd have time to say goodbye to her friends and family. Still, she had decided to go off to war. She activated her omnitool and tried to update her social media with a goodbye message. To her shock, nothing but static appeared on the display.

"I'm afraid there is no outside communications on a Cerberus Shuttle, miss," Berr said, reaching over and deactivating Kelly's omnitool. "Not on civilian lines anyway."

"Oh, um, sorry," Kelly managed, paling suddenly. A disturbing thought flashed through her mind. She'd never heard of Cerberus before. Was she being kidnapped?

"Yes, before you ask, the subterfuge and secrecy is necessary Ms. Chambers," Okeer rumbled. "You'll understand soon enough. We're on our way to Arcturus. Warlord Urdnot will explain everything there. But for now, I want you to take a look at some files for me. I've perused them myself, but though I am a scientist of many disciplines, psychology is not one of them."

The krogan handed Kelly a datapad, and she reluctantly opened it and found herself looking at personal profiles and psych evals, with names and dates redacted. "Um, what are these?"

"Just look at them. See if anything jumps out at you," Berr ordered. "It's a long ride to Arcturus, even on a military shuttle. You've got a few hours to kill. Me, I'm taking a nap. Ancestors only know when I'm going to get another one."

Kelly started paging through the files, but with no idea what to look for, nothing really stood out to her. It wasn't until she got to the fourth or fifth file she realized something was off about all of them. It was subtle, in the facial expressions and word choice of the logs, but there was something there. She paged back through them, looking for the clues Dr. Zhang had taught her to look for. It wasn't quite like the textbook examples or case studies, but as Kelly continued to read she started highlighting things on the pad. 

"Hey, these aren't real, are they?" Kelly asked, looking up from the 22nd and most disturbingly blatant of the files yet.

"Let's say for the sake of argument that they're not. Why do you ask?" Okeer rumbled. Berr stirred, though he stayed leaned back with his eyes closed.

"Well, because an awful lot of these have textbook signs of Indoctrination. Subtle shifts in personality. Breaks in routines, development of odd neurotic behaviors and twitches. If these were real, I'd say that you have a big influx of Indoctrinated personnel. But it's weird, because none of these people are batarians, and those are the most likely subjects to show those signs. There have been only a bare handful of cases in which humans, quarians or krogan were Indoctrinated, but if we had more, I would bet you that they'd behave exactly like these people are."

Berr had sat up, his eyes half hooded. "Are you sure?"

Kelly frowned, looking back down at the slate. "Well no, not really, I mean, it's not like I've ever had an actual subject to observe or anything, and I still don't have my doctorate. But Dr. Zhang did some consulting for the League from time to time, and this looks an awful lot like the cases she got, except with a much higher number of positives. Usually we'd have to dig through a few hundred files to find one Indoctrinated subject."

"Your professor showed you classified League doctuments?" Okeer growled, leaning forward.

Flinching back, Kelly shook her head vigorously. "No! I was her doctoral student, and she only ever let me look at the files for civilians. None of it was classified, I think. And all I ever saw were personnel files, not what they were working on."

Berr whistled softly. "Damn, I knew you were a good catch when I saw your file get priority flagged by the system, but to have someone who's actually done this before? Tell me, how many of the files you flagged as Indoctrinated were ever prosecuted?"

"I don't know. Dr. Zhang had to review them first, and I never heard about what happened after that. It was just part of my graduate work, you know?"

"Hell no. I'm just an NCO in a suit. Never went to officers school or any kind of school but life. I'm a working man," Berr laughed.

"The krogan academic process differs slightly from that of the humans or quarians. Or rather, it did back in my day. I kidnapped several respected scientists and forced them to train me at gun point," Okeer rumbled.

Unsure of what to say, Kelly decided that saying nothing was far better and waited for the other two to speak again. After a pregnant pause, Berr did. "Ma'am, I'm afraid that you've just been drafted. Considering you were signing up for the military anyway, I'm not feeling to bad about it, but this probably isn't what you had in mind. I need you to go through those files and send me the names of every single one of them that's Indoctrinated."

"You mean these are real?" Kelly blurted.

"You want to know the answer to that?" Okeer demanded, showing Kelly his teeth. It wasn't a smile.

For a moment, Kelly hesitated. Did she really want to know if this was real? Would it be easier to sleep at night if she thought it might all be a game, a test of some League screening process?

"I need to know. More background and information on each subject is going to be necessary as well. A full team, preferably with extensive experience with profiling batarians would be helpful as well."

Berr and Okeer grimaced at the same time, and it was Okeer who spoke next. "I'm afraid that isn't going to be possible, Ms. Chambers. This is a delicate situation, and the less you know the better. I can tell you this though; this is real. Very, very real. And utterly disturbing."

Kelly's heart sank. If she were profiling a large number of League citizens, that could mean only one thing.

The Reapers were back.

_**In orbit of Parnack, Glory of the Ascendant Servant - Saren Arterius, The Herald**_

_**March 17th, 2183**_

The being that had once been known as Saren Arterius stood upon the bridge of the ship as silent geth worked around him, each platform working in total union and harmony. They were the most fervent of the servants, and though none here had received the gifts of the Masters to conceal their true allegiance, all worked towards the Harvest. In time, all sentients in the galaxy would bow before the will of the Masters and accept perfection. The only difference was whether or not they came into the flock willingly. For those that served as the geth did, freely and without hesitation, there would be rewards. For those that delayed, who resisted, there would be only torment.

Flexing his left hand, Saren remembered what that torment could be like. He had come to the Vanguard full of pride, unaware of just what his place would be. He had demanded that his people be given power, that they be placed on a high pedestal above all other species. Emotions had driven Saren, random firings of his neural tissue and chemical stimulations based on primitive organic biology. That had been before he had known. Before he had seen. To show him the truth, the master had taken his left arm and grafted on a new one, one that gave Saren great and terrible power. With it came the truth: to oppose the Reapers was impossible. Obedience was the only way to avoid pain.

One of the geth approached Saren, this one slightly different than the others. Its steps were more fluid, and its armor finer. "Saren Herald, we approach Parnack. We will escort you to the shuttle bay."

Saren nodded in approval and followed the geth, which simply called itself "VI" after the Virtual Intelligence that organic races used to interface with their computers. This VI was designed for a computer to interface with organics though, which amused Saren somewhat. The Masters themselves were neither synthetic nor organic in origin. They were something more.

The shuttle ride was short and silent. Geth did not speak aloud normally, and VI only spoke when necessary. Normally Saren was good at reading people, even people of League species. But the geth were a mystery. They served at Saren's beck and call, as he was the Herald. For now they were tools, useful and loyal, but Saren disliked the machines. A bias that shamed him in the eyes of his Masters. To the Reapers, all other forms of life were as worms.

Once they arrived on the surface of Parnack, Saren took a moment to survey the landscape. A few years earlier, Parnack had been at the cusp of the Space Age. They were still using chemical fuels and nuclear reactors, and had little idea of how to utilize element zero and the mass effect field. Parnack itself was poor in eezo sources, so the native yahg had been struggling to reach even Parnack's largest moon. Two decades ago the Citadel had tried to establish diplomatic relations with the yahg chieftains, but for their pains the yahg and eaten them. They had seen their visitors as weak and servile by yahg standards, as they spoke of peace, not strength.

Now things were different. Great spaceports and manufactories had been built on the planet's surface, and dozens of orbitals had been created. Saren had brought eezo to Parnack, and when he had come he had come with fire and weapons. Seeing a fellow predator, the yahg had bowed to Saren and his chosen warlord, who had rapidly conquered the planet with modern mass accelerator weaponry. Now the yahg were poised to bring war to the rest of the galaxy. It hadn't even been all that hard to conceal; the Citadel had a single listening post in the Parnack system and once its feeds were falsified, the galaxy was able to remain ignorant of Parnack and its inhabitants.

A deep laugh echoed across the landing pad from behind Saren. "So, the turian returns. How was picking on the weaklings? Didn't strain yourself, did you metalhead?"

Saren turned, finding a member of the one species in known space that both intimidated the yahg and excited them. A krogan.

"No, krogan, I did not strain myself. My mission was not whole successful however. Neither was yours, as I recall. Remember, we are not here to bring glory to ourselves, but to the Masters," Saren told the young krogan before him.

The krogan's steely blue eyes glared down at Saren. "You are like the tank, turian. You talk, and talk, but you do not act. Why should I respect these masters of yours? I serve because you promised me a good fight. Not because I follow your metal monstrosities."

To the Masters, the most valuable of servants were the kind that followed them willingly, without the need for Indoctrination's caress or implants to control movement. Grunt, like many of the yahg, served out of a desire for battle and glory. Saren had his own reasons for serving. Once he had sought glory, but now he realized that was meaningless. His purpose was now far more enticing.

"You serve because you were given as a gift to further the Masters' plan. I could stick you back in your tank, now that you have fulfilled your purpose."

"Heh. Heh. Heh. I'd like to see you try, turian. You need that stuff that prothean thing put in my skull. I don't know what it means yet, which means you don't know what it means yet. Which means we still have people to fight. Send me there, these yahg are pitiful. They know not the cunning of Shiagur, the strength of Moro, or the honor of Kredak. They are weak. Give me real foes to fight."

Inwardly, Saren raged. So, the Beacon had not revealed its secrets to Grunt either. All Saren had received were a series of impressions and images. They meant **nothing** to him, sensory input his body had no way of interpreting. He had hoped that with two Beacons, they might find what the truth was. Instead, they would need to find a key.

"Give it time. You are but a grunt in the Masters plans. I do not schedule battles according to your whims, krogan."

Before the krogan could answer, Saren motioned to the geth and strode forward to the gates of the Temple of the Dark Masters. The door was made of black stone that seemed to suck in the light, material that had been crafted by the will of the Masters themselves. It opened the minds of those who entered and allowed them to see the truth. For those that served, it acted as a conduit that allowed them to hear the whispers of their gods. The door was set with the skulls of those who had resisted the conquest of Parnack by Threk Un'Got, the Enlightened. Their many eyeless sockets stared into oblivion, and the triangular mouths sagged open as if begging for mercy that would never come.

As Saren strode forward, the guardians stepped aside for him while the door swung open with grinding screech. They had once been yahg, and hints of their ancestry could still be glimpsed. Gone were their many eyes and two horns, instead their mouths had been enlarged, and teeth had sprung up inside and outside the throat. Their hands had been removed as well, replaced with rust colored blades that dripped poisonous ichor. Their bodies were spiked and decaying, strung with cables and interlaced with metallic plates that showed underneath rotting flesh. They were called Berserkers, the Uplifted yahg who had been bestowed with their Masters dark blessings. Like Saren, they existed only to serve. As it should be.

Inside the temple, there was no light. For a normal turian, that would have meant blindness or the need to rely on technology to allow them to see in the dark. Saren had no such need. The Masters' blessings allowed him to see where there was no illumination, for it was in darkness that the Masters lived. In darkness there was order. In order, there was Perfection.

As Saren descended into the depths of the temple, he could hear the krogan grumbling behind him. "Superstitious morons. Where is the honor in tombs?"

Unlike the krogan, many of the yahg served out of religious fervor. They rightly believed the Masters to be a higher form of being, to be the very gods of darkness. Saren himself did not believe in the divine, but the Masters were undeniably supernatural. Indoctrination and projection were just two of the powers the Masters commanded that Saren could not fathom with science alone. To him though, Religion was just a tool for controlling the masses. If they worshiped the Masters, that made them useful. The Masters themselves cared only for obedience, and were not particular about how it came about. If lesser races wanted to prostrate themselves, it was only one more form of control; nothing more.

Within the depths of the temple waited High Lord Threk Un'Got and his bodyguards. The only light was the faint glimmer of electronics from the geth, but Saren could see the ruler of Parnak well enough. Yahg were massive, even bigger than krogan by nearly a meter, and Threk was the biggest specimen Saren had ever seen. A massive triangular mouth lined with teeth that could shred even turian skin clamped shut in a gesture of respect, while Threk clapped his massive three taloned hands to show delight as he stood up from his throne of bone and metal.

"Welcome, Herald. I trust your efforts were blessed by the masters?"

"We have met with success, Lord Threk, but there is still much to be done," Saren answered, dipping his head slightly to Threk as a show of obedience to the lord's authority.

"What he means is, he killed a bunch of people but we didn't get what we wanted," the krogan grunted. "And turn on the damn lights. I can see well enough in the night, but this tomb is darker than a salarians liver."

Threk made a cutting gesture with his hands, a sign of silent amusement at a child. "Ah, alien, I see you have returned as well. Tell me, have you decided on a name yet? I cannot treat with one who has no name."

"Well, your precious Herald called me Grunt. I suppose that will do well enough. It's simple, and lacks meaning. Like me. Now turn on the damn lights or I'll kill one of your warriors and use his bones for a pyre."

The yahg warriors stirred, and from the Unacended there were soft growls. The krogan could make good on his promise. He'd already taken on half a dozen warriors in single combat and bested them, and had once taken two champions at once. He'd even slain a berserker, armed only with tooth and claw. It was the reason Saren kept the krogan alive, aside from his use as a red herring for the Citadel, that and the fact that he was untouched by the Masters. On occasion, that could be useful.

"Very well. Give Grunt some light," Threk ordered. A single candle's flame arose from within the skull mounted atop Threk's throne, it's flickering, greasy flame casting the throne room all in shadows. For Grunt, it would be enough. Krogan had poor color vision, but they could see well enough in near darkness. The yahg needed no light at all, being able to see heat from one of their eye sets naturally. The geth could see whatever spectrum of radiation they desired, being synthetic in nature. None of them could see for true, as Saren could. He saw the darkness, and what lay within it.

"Mighty Threk, I have communed with the Masters and heard their dark utterings," Saren began, pacing before the throne of bone. "Now is the time for those who believe to strike out against the heretics that plague this galaxy. Long have the masters slumbered, and now we must call them to waking, that the galaxy may once again feel their dark touch. Only with blood shall the masters hear our cries, only by suffering may we purge unbelief."

Eagerly, Threk and his warriors snapped their thumbs and forefingers in anticipation. "Of course Herald, we are ready. The fleet stands at a thousand mighty ships, and I have ten million warriors armed and ready for war. May I lead this host myself, or will your wisdom guide us?"

Saren allowed his mandibles to droop sadly, and made a throwing away gesture with his left hand. "No, mighty Threk, I shall not be with you. The masters have told me where you must go, and where I must go, and our destinations are not the same."

"Very well. Where shall the blood be spilled?" Threk demanded.

"Kahje. They worship false gods there, those known now as the protheans, their pathetic chaff that the wind carried away from the grasp of order. Slay all of them and their servants that you find, but save for me the one known as Vendetta, and the asari Dr. Liara T'soni. The Masters have need of them."

"Of course. What good is battle if slaves are not taken? They shall be delivered to you, and the rest put to the axe, or given up to the masters. Blood for the dark gods! Bones for my throne!"

"You're sending these idiots to battle? What about me?" Grunt demanded.

At that, Saren smiled. "I have received word that the salarians have found an egg on an derelict ship. You shall go to their lair, and bring your makers the beast that hatched from it. Her children you may slay."

"Why do I give a damn about some old egg?" Grunt demanded. "Killing children is boring. Give me something better."

"Why, because her children are rachni, and she is the rachni queen. I thought any good krogan warrior would leapt at the chance to fight that foe."

Grunt threw back his head and roared with laughter. "Herald, you talk too damn much. But at least you have good foes. I'll do what you ask."

Saren didn't mention that it was not his will that Grunt followed, but that of the Masters. In the end, all shall serve. Knowingly or not, willingly or not. It was all a part of the Masters' plan.


	6. Chapter 5

_"__ I wish the ring had never come to me," Frodo lamented. "I wish none of this had happened."  
"So do all who live to see such times," Gandalf said gently. "But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world Frodo, besides the will of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring. In which case, you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought."_

_-The Fellowship of the Ring_

_**Deep Space, ILS Normandy SR-1 - John Shepard**_

_**March 17th, 2183**_

It was coming. Reaching out for him, something, grasping for him in the horrible red light that blinded his eyes and baffled his senses. He couldn't understand, but he felt the fear, the terror, the-

John jerked himself awake, his body drenched with sweat as he slammed upright against the restraints holding him down. Training kicked in, and he did a quick double take, then relaxed instead of activating his biotics and trying to break free. He was in the Normandy's medbay, and that meant he was safe. He took a deep breath and tried to relax as calming hands touched his forehead.

"Well, you're awake. Who are you?" Dr. Chakwas asked in slightly strained tones. She sounded tired, and John wondered just how long he'd been out.

"Lieutenant John Shepard, service number N-5923-AC-2826. I suppose I should ask who you are, ma'am," John rasped, trying to smile.

She sniffed, though John thought he saw a smile tug at the edge of the doctors lips. "I think you know perfectly well who I am, young man. It seems you've gone and skinned a bit more than your knee. Lay back now, I'm going to take your vitals again."

Complying was simple enough, and John laid back and closed his eyes, as images from his nightmares danced through his mind. They seemed like just random images, bits of data firing off like a regular dream, but they felt important, somehow. As if it was some vital message, but so scrambled John had no way of understanding it.

"Hmm, vitals are normal though you seem to be exhibiting some rather unusual brain activity. How do you feel?"

"Like a squad of krogan just had a party on the inside of my head," John groaned. "How long was I out Doc?"

"About 29 hours," Chakwas answered as she tapped away at her omnitool. "You had me worried there for a while Commander. Still, I suppose I should have known better. If Kalros couldn't kill you, the krogan would be downright insulted if I let you die from something as minor as a small explosion."

The door slide open, and Captain Anderson strode into the med bay, dressed in his shirt sleeves with dark circles under his eyes. Shepard glanced at the clock over the medbay door and grimaced. It was "night" on the Normandy, when the Captain slept and Shepard normally had the watch. He'd been sleeping on the job, and that irked him, though he knew it was no fault of his own.

"Captain," John said, trying to stand at attention and finding his legs were not working. He settled for sitting up and sketching a salute.

Anderson nodded at him, his mouth firming into a thin line. "At ease, son. You've been through the grinder. How is he doctor? Good enough for a debriefing?"

"I suppose he is, though I wouldn't press too hard captain. I'm guessing you'll want privacy, I do have all that paper work piling up. I'll be in my office if you need me."

The doctor stepped into the small room that was her combined office and sleeping quarters, leaving Anderson and Shepard alone.

"How bad was it, sir? Did my people all make it out? What about Nihlus?" And the beacon? John asked, trying to keep the pain out of his voice. He remembered Mal going down, and Chief Leerg. Not to mention all the civilians and the rest of Commander Williams' marines.

"Bad. Mal's gone, though I suppose you knew that already. The others made it out OK, including Chief Massani and his family, along with Chief Veskar. The rest of the colony was hit bad. We left before the final casualty report was in, but it was in the tens of thousands. A lot of missing, and from what Lieutenant Alkeno and Commander Williams told me, likely gone with the geth. Whatever happened with the beacon, it's gone too." John's face must have betrayed his guilt over that particular incident, and the captain raised a hand in a calming gesture. "Not your fault, son. Or Commander Williams for that matter. You had no way of knowing that the beacon would react that way. The one bright spot is Nihlus. He's recovered, and we're holding him down in the armory. That's what I want to talk to you about. That, and the beacon."

"I can't tell you much about the beacon that you don't already know sir," John admitted. "It activated when Commander Williams went to secure it, and I tried to throw her clear of whatever it was that it was doing. I got sucked in instead, and..."

Anderson waited patiently, taking a seat on the bed across from John while the XO ordered his thoughts.

"I saw visions sir. I'm not sure what they mean, or even what they are. But it felt like terror. A nightmare, a message of some sort from the protheans, though what exactly the message was I don't know, only that it was about something bad."

"The Reapers," Anderson muttered, looking through John and seeing horrors from his own memory. Anderson had long been one of the League's top experts on the Reapers, and had retrieved and destroyed several dangerous artifacts over the years. He'd also been one of the first to work with the Citadel against the Reaper threat, alongside Flavus Vakarian, and even Nihlus. He'd passed on those contacts to John, and while the Commander hadn't seen Nihlus before, he had worked with Garrus, Flavus' son once or twice in the Kite's Nest.

"Could be sir. Maybe the Protheans tried to get out a warning when they came. We still don't know enough about that war, even taking into account the data T'soni has distributed. By the time her AI was made, the war with the Reapers had been going on for hundreds of years. Even the protheans didn't recall everything about it by that point."

"Possible," Anderson agreed, the shook his head as if to clear his thoughts. "What about the geth? And Saren. Did you see him there?"

"No sir, not personally," John admitted. "But if he was, that would seem to connect them to the Reapers, and explain Saren's interest in the beacon. If it contained any sort of information on their tactics or weaponry, it would have been enormously valuable to us, and very damaging to his own agenda."

"He always was a right bastard," Anderson growled. "You know, I'm 99.9% certain it was him who took out our colony on Eletania in '62. We could never prove anything of course, but I can't help but draw the connection now. That colony was unearthing prothean relics back then too. I wonder, was he working for the Reapers even then?"

"A damn good question sir. I thought he'd been killed on Omega? I've had the story from someone who was there, and she said he was killed by Flavus Vakarian."

"From Ms. Tali'Zorah you mean." Anderson's lips twitched as if he wanted to smile, but his face soon darkened. "They never did find the body. For a long time, we figured it had just rapidly decayed, like the cannibals in the Kite's Nest or the banshees' all did. Now though, I'm not so sure."

John's blood ran cold as he heard the emphasis Anderson put on banshees'. "'Banshees', sir? As in, more than one? I thought the only known case of an asari Reaper-form was that of Tevos on Omega."

"It was. Until the Collectors hit Thessia with a krogan leading them and reaperfied half a dozen asari justicars."

"Well, shit," John sighed, closing his eyes for a moment. "Has the Council declared war yet?"

Anderson shook his head. "No, thank God. Though they're mighty damn close to it. I don't think I need to tell you that they're playing up the supposed connection between the Collectors and the League, especially Cerberus. Though seeing as Cerberus has never officially existed, that's been a bit of a tough sell."

"Well thank Christ for that," John declared, and meant it. "I take it we're heading out to the front lines then?"

"Not exactly. We're making our way through the League's relay network to Arcturus. As we are now at war with the Geth Collective and war with the Council seems imminent, the old relays have been shut down and sealed off with mine fields. The Council has done the same thing with theirs. It's hurting our internal trade a bit, but better that then a repeat of the Battle of STARGATE. The salarians won't catch us with our pants down this time."

John nodded. "I hate to think that we might go to war with the Council again, just as it's becoming clear the Reapers are not gone for good. What the beacon was trying to tell us is anyone's guess, but whatever Saren is planning, he needs to be stopped."

"Indeed. Which is why I'd like you to come along and help me interrogate Nihlus, if you're feeling up to it?"

Anderson's tone made it a real question instead of an order, and John experimentally tried to stand again. He was a bit wobbly, but he thought he could manage. "I'll make it sir. Let's find out just what a Council Spectre was doing on Eden Prime."

_**ILS Normandy Armory - Nihlus Kyrik**_

All things considered, Nihlus figured he'd gotten off fairly lightly on Eden Prime. He'd nearly died when the geth had caught him, and if it hadn't been for the timely intervention of the Leaguers Nihlus figured he would be dead. A tad ironic really, he'd spent weeks on Eden Prime doing everything he could do to avoid contact with the League, but considering the fact that Saren was back, going to the League might not be such a bad idea. True, the Council would need to know, and soon, but the League would need to know as well. If Saren was back, that meant treachery and terrorism were not far behind.

The Leaguers who'd picked up Nihlus were also at the top of his list of enemies he wouldn't mind being captured by. He knew Anderson from the bad old days before the war, and he'd heard about Shepard from Garrus. They were about as good as people within the League got in Nihlus' experience, and they would probably realize just what Saren's return implied. They'd even pumped his injuries full of medigel and given him plenty of painkiller, which in Nihlus' opinion made them all right by any measuring stick. Nihlus wasn't sure that being on this many drugs in hostile territory was really the best thing, but his wounds hurt too much even with the drugs for him to really think they were doping him up just to interrogate him.

The door to the armory slid open, and the two marines standing guard over Nilus braced to attention and saluted as Anderson and Shepard stepped into the armory compartment. From what Nihlus had seen, the League ship he was on was too small to have a proper brig, so they were making do. He tried to sit up and salute himself, but the drugs made his head spin, and Nilhus settled for widening his mandibles slightly in greeting. "Captain. Commander. Good to see you're alright Shepard. From what Garrus has told me, the galaxy needs more humans like you."

"Nihlus. I've heard about you. I'm not sure this is the way I'd like to have met you, though I suppose it's better than the alternative," Shepard said, sitting down on a crate with a grimace.

Nihlus tried to thrum in amusement, but that made his wounds hurt too much, so he stopped. "If you want to know why I was on Eden Prime, I can't tell you, but I'm sure two smart N7s can figure out what a Council Spectre would be doing on a human world with a prothean dig site."

"At the moment, that's a secondary concern," Anderson declared, but Nihlus saw a slight tightening of the skin around the eyes. That was a sign of human stress. He liked Anderson well enough, a good man to be a friend to and a terrible enemy. Unfortunately, of late Anderson was more enemy than friend to the Council. "Tell us exactly what you saw. Chief Massani passed on that you said something about Saren, but we need you to clarify that."

"He was there. I saw him with the geth, ordering them, instructing them on what to do. I don't know what else to tell you, except I never really bought the story about his body dissolving like the reaped do, cannibals and that banshee on Omega," Nilhus explained.

"What was Saren after?" Anderson demanded.

Wincing, Nihlus let his mandibles tighten as he sucked in a painful breath. Spirits, with this much medicine, why did it still hurt so much? "The Beacon. Had to be. I transmitted a signal to the Council a few days back that you'd uncovered it. Saren must have intercepted it. Prothean relics have been going missing from Council space lately. A dig site on Therum, a raid on an Ilos museum. We thought it was you. I'm starting to suspect something different."

Shepard grimaced and looked at Anderson, who glanced at Nihlus, then nodded at the Commander. "He's not going anywhere. Tell him."

"We've had a few shipments of prothean relics go missing from League shipping as well. We thought it was the Council. That's why we sent a warship to get the beacon," Shepard explained.

"Of course," Nihlus groaned. "Still pointing guns at each other instead of the real bad guys. Saren must be laughing at us now. But we all know what's really behind all this."

"Reapers," Anderson agreed. "The question is, what are they after this time?"

Nihlus leaned back and closed his eyes. "If I knew that captain, I wouldn't have just been shot by the man I once thought was my friend."

_**Tevos Memorial Hospital, The Citadel - Garrus Vakarian**_

_**March 17th, 2183**_

"Really Nox, you'd think they'd have better sense than to put me in a hospital named after the woman who helped murder my father," Garrus growled as the taciturn batarian helped him climb back into his armor.

Nox just grunted as he pulled Garrus' gauntlet on. It was a disapproving grunt; Nox wasn't much of a fan of the hospital's name either. There had been quite a stir when an anonymous donor had funded the construction of the hospital on the condition that it be named after the asari whose name was now synonymous for "traitor." In the end, it had taken the direct intervention of asari Councilor Aethyta, who had released a statement that the Reapers, not Tevos herself, were to blame for her traitorous actions. As someone who'd lost a lot more than national pride when Tevos turned, Garrus had a hard time buying that. He hadn't reacted well, which was one of the reasons he wasn't the most popular Spectre with the Council right now. That, and the fact that he remained convinced that it was the Reapers, not the League that were the real threat.

"I'm really not looking forward to this Nox," Garrus admitted as he picked up his helmet and stared at the visor. "I'm not the most popular person with the Council at the best of times. Now, with the Collectors and their League connections..." He trailed off, looking into the visor and wondering what his father, the legendary hero, would do in a situation like this.

"He'd be proud," Nox rumbled, causing Garrus to look up in shock. "Your dad. Lost my son to the Reapers. Know he'd be proud of me. You didn't give up. I didn't give up. Proud."

With that, Nox nodded to Garrus, then picked up Mantis rifle and handed it to Garrus and slapped him on the back, then headed out of the door.

Garrus cradled the rifle, remembering when he'd been given it. By his father, of course. It had been on his 15th birthday, before he'd headed out to boot camp. At the time, Garrus had thought of it as nothing more than a toy. Now it represented his father's legacy, his oath to keep the galaxy safe, just as his father Flavus had before him. He folded the gun up and let it click onto the magnetic rack on his back. Time to go.

Outside, Fuli was waiting with Nox, her face drawn and tired. She'd been the one treating Garrus until they'd arrived at the Citadel, though Garrus had been unconscious for most of it. He hadn't told anyone what he'd seen from the Beacon, but it hadn't been good. Visions of death and destruction, images and senses that Garrus didn't quite understand. Only the fear and sense of hopelessness. Whatever the beacon had contained though was gone. Fuli had told Garrus that it had exploded shortly after Garrus had been trapped in its pull.

"Feeling better?" Fuli asked, reaching out to put a hand on Garrus' neck to check his temperature, just like his mother had all those years ago.

"Well enough. Come on, the Council is waiting," Garrus ordered, gently removing Fuli's hand and turning to stomp off towards the air car pad.

The ride to the Presidum was short, if exciting. Blasto seemed to believe he had to drive an air car like the cheap action vid hero he'd named himself after. Personally Garrus thought the name was a little silly, but Blasto was skilled enough he could get away with eccentricities like that. It didn't help that Fuli seemed to find Blasto's driving "exciting" which just provoked the hanar to even more dangerous stunts. Still, no one died, which was more than Garrus could say for their last mission.

Once, the Presidum has been an open, airy place full of light and beauty, with a statue as a monument to the krogan's aid against the rachni amid a sparkling lake, while the scent of flowers spread through the air. Now the krogan statue was gone, as were the lake the flowers. Instead, military personnel were everywhere, the lake had been replaced by guard stations and heavy weapons emplacements. Instead of chatting couples on the benches, grim volus merchants argued in low voices. There were cameras and check points everywhere, as well as dozens of Indoctrination scanners. The Presidum reflected a fundamental change in the Citadel Council. Whereas once the Citadel had been seen as a beacon of progress and interstellar cooperation, now it was a bulwark against aggressors.

"Identification?" a turian in a C-Sec uniform demanded.

Garrus handed over his Spectre credentials and underwent the full DNA scan to prove just who he was, along with the extra Indoctrination scanner. Once traitorous Spectre had been quite enough for the Council.

"Alright, you and your companions are clean. Sergeant Nerro will escort you to the Council Chambers."

The elevator up to the Council chamber had two armed guards in it, as well as even more scanners and intelligence gear. Once it arrived at the top, Garrus stepped out into the new Council chambers. The old had featured flowing waterfalls and pleasant formations of greenery. The new was stark walls of metal with holo murals glowing on their surfaces. Murals depicting scenes of heroic turian bravery in the Krogan Rebellions, of asari peace makers guiding less advanced races into the light of the Council's protection, of salarian scientists creating miraculous weapons that allowed the Citadel to prevail over its foes. Subtle, it was not, Garrus reflected. The old Council had put up a facade of gentile peace and tranquility. The new held a bared sword in one hand, a gift in the other. You got to pick which one you received. A pure and simple philosophy.

He and his squad made their way to Aethyta's private chambers. Apparently this wouldn't be a public meeting, or even one of the full Council. Perhaps that was for the best. What Garrus had to say was not for the ears of the masses. Aethyta's private chamber was guarded by tranquil looking asari commandos, calmly staring into the glow of a tapestry that showed a scene of Thessian history, when the asari had built their first starship all those long millennia ago. Their calm was a lie, Garrus knew that either of those woman could kill with their minds, bare hands, or any of the number of weapons that hung from the webbing at their belts. The asari might be beautiful, but underneath that beauty was a mother's ferocity. And someone had just tried to attack their children. Now was not a good time to be an enemy of the asari race.

Aethyta's chambers themselves were stark and functional. There were two uncomfortable looking chairs before the Councilor's desk, along with an expensive looking holo-communicator display in the corner. The desk itself was neat, and free of clutter. Two stacks of data slates were neatly arranged in one corner, and a old fashioned picture frame with the image of a grinning asari girl on actual, expensive paper sat it in it.

The woman behind the desk was also neat and professional looking, but her face was worn and tired. Normally the asari appeared ageless and beautiful no matter what their age, but the office of Citadel Councilor in a time of near constant threat of violence had taken their toll on the 800 year old Councilor. Talon lines and deep shadows marked her eyes, and her head tentacles were turning a dark shade of violet along their tips. Her mouth was pressed into a thin line, and Aethyta's eyes blazed with an inner passion and fury that Garrus recognized as that of a zealot. There was nothing Aethyta would not do for her people, no line she would not cross, no sacred thing she would not use, no weapon she would not employ in the name of the greater good for asari. She was the solid rock on which the Council was built, the longest serving member, and the one who was the most dangerous, in person or politically. And she was the woman to whom Garrus answered.

"Specter Vakarian. I must thank you for your timely intervention on Thessia. Too many were killed as it is, but you did recover valuable intelligence, as well as save that old hunk of rock we call a temple. Now tell me just what the fuck those vorcha spawned assholes were after," Aethyta growled, her voice gravely and dangerous.

"I'm not sure Councilor," Garrus answered, coming to a stance of parade rest. "I believe it was the message the prothean beacon contained."

Aethyta snorted, her eyes narrowing in anger. "They tell me you were the last one to interact with the beacon before it exploded. We'd been studying that thing for years, and no one, not even the great and powerful Voice of Truth ever figured who to turn the hunk of junk on. And yet the Collectors and that krogan waltz right in and do just that, then it explodes after a turian of all people gets its message. So what was in the message?"

Pausing, Garrus let his mandibles droop in dismay slightly. "I apologize Councilor, but I'm not sure if I can answer that question. I did receive...something from the beacon. What, I'm not sure."

"Cut the goddessdamn crap spectre!" Athyta snarled. "You tell me what was in that message, and you tell me now!"

"I'm not sure he can, Councilor," Fuli pipped up. "I melded with Spectre Vakarian while he was out, and I think I recieved the same message. It's... well, it's a series of sensations and impressions, but it's really anything I can put into words."

"Try. For your own sake, try hard," Aethyta ordered.

"Death. Pain. Terror. Horrible, dark things," Garrus replied. "I think it was a message of some sort, a warning. A warning about the Reapers, if I'm not mistaken."

"Really," Aethyta growled, her eyes narrowing. "Are you sure about that, Vakarian? You're awful preoccupied about the Reapers. Are you sure your own biases are not in play here?"

Shrugging, Garrus did his best not to let his trepidation show. Aethyta had a powerful, intimidating presence when she wasn't putting the screws in. When she wanted to, the woman was the stuff that dark legends of witch queens were built on. "It's possible. But I'm fully briefed in on all Harvest Protocols. I saw the images the League leaked of the Leviathan of Dis before they put it into a star. What I saw in my vision was an exact match, part of it anyway. It's still confused and distorted, but I've been around enough Reaper tech to recognize what their presence feels like, and I felt it in the vision as well."

Aethyta turned her gaze to Fuli, who nodded frantically. "He's right Matron. The terror, the images...they were not clear, but what I can make out matches the Reapers' fingerprints."

"Fuck."

The oath hung in the air for a few moments, then Aethyta stood and faced the window that overlooked the Presidium. "People are screaming for war, Spectre. If I wasn't already half sure that the Reapers were playing us again, I'd be one of them. The rest of the Council is divided. Quentius is a good man, but he's spent all his life preparing to fight the League. He knows the Reapers are real, but he has a hard time seeing beyond the threat the League represents. And the blood trail they're leaving in the water. The geth hit one of their colonies, and hard. They can't hope to fight a war on two fronts, and we'd crush them if they even tried. Valern believes that the best way to fight the Reapers is to crush the League first, then use their resources to build the forces we'd need to hope to take them on."

"What do you think Councilor?" Garrus asked, his own voice thrumming with tension as his mandibles twitched slightly. 

"I think we're out of time. I think the Reapers are making their play. The question is, why? They took out the Protheans at the very least, and according to everything out of the Primacy, the Protheans had a fleet larger than that of the League and Citadel combined, with an empire that could swallow up all our turf combined with ease. There is something that the Reapers need to have happen before they can make their grand reappearance. Whatever it is, we cannot let it happen. And I'm making it your job to stop it, Spectre."

Aethyta turned, her mask gone. She looked tired, worn, and exhausted. But her eyes still glowed with passion. She wasn't done just yet. "I need you to go see my daughter, Spectre. She's been out in the cold for too long. Show her and her AI your vision. Perhaps she can make some sense of it."

Wheels turned in Garrus' head. Before running off to Kahje with a rogue justicar and a prothean AI, Dr. Liara T'soni had been one of the most highly placed researches at the Temple Project. If she was Aethyta's daughter, that might explain why she hadn't been on any Spectre hit lists. Even Aethyta had some heart.

"Dr. T'soni will come to no harm, I swear," Garrus promised.

Aethyta grunted and turned back to her window. "See that she doesn't and that not one word of our connection passes any lips. If people knew who she was to me, they'd use it against me. Miss P'Safen, don't tell Nezzie any of what I've said. I don't know if you still work for her, but if you do, now would be a good time to start falsifying your reports."

"Yes ma'am," Fuli squeaked.

Aethyta grunted, her eyes still looking out the window. Garrus recognized the dismissal, and lead his squad back the way they'd come and headed for the Spectre docks. Perhaps he'd been right all along. One way or another though, he would find out what the Reapers wanted, and protect the peoples under his care from any harm that might come to them. Whatever the source.

_Authors Note: _

_As many of you have noticed, chapters for this story are coming out significantly slower than they did for my previous story. Working with several new betas, along with some unexpected emergencies in my personal life, has delayed the production of several chapters. Fear not, we're still updating and working hard. _


	7. Chapter 6

_The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,  
Gang aft agley,  
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,  
For promis'd joy! _

_-Robert Burns, To a Mouse_

_**Office of the Prime Minister, Arcturus Station - Prime Minister Steven Hackett**_

_**March 18th, 2183**_

Gazing out at the stars, Steven Hackett could almost forget the burdens that rested upon his tired old shoulders. He saw the wonder and glory of creation, rays of light from time immemorial that were just now reaching the permaglass of his ten by four meter wide viewport. He saw galaxies far away, mere pinpricks of light, and the glory of the Milky Way as it could only be seen from deep space, away from atmospheres and blinding light sources. It recalled him to earlier, better days, when he'd been a young boy in Argentina, out on a scouting trip away from the lights of Buenos Aires. He'd shared humanity's dream of reaching the stars even then, back before even the prothean ruins had been discovered. Things had been simpler then.

A familiar, delicate hand placed itself lightly around Hackett's waist as a head of soft silky hair rested upon his shoulder. "They're here."

Placing his own arm around his wife's shoulders, Hackett closed his eyes and breathed deeply for a quiet moment. Then he straighten, rolled his shoulders, and fingered the wide scar on the right side of his face. "How bad is it?"

Secretary of War Vexxu'Hackett shrugged, her own glowing eyes gazing out to the stars. "You've seen the reports. It's bad. Casualty figures are still coming in, parliament is clamoring for war, and the public is demanding justice for the slain. The Citadel has doubled their patrols, and we've had two major clashes in the past 24 hours with serious casualties, along the Batarian DMZ and the Tuchanka border."

"And amidst all that, Shepard is probably bringing us word that the Reapers are behind it all," Hackett growled. "At least they got Nihlus alive. He's a valuable intelligence asset if nothing else, a bargaining chip if we're lucky. Any news on the geth?"

"No. We've locked down the Relays, and the fleet is mobilizing to hit Rannoch with everything we've got if it comes to that," Vexxu replied, but she didn't sound pleased. Conquering the quarian homeworld again had been a pipe dream of the League for a long time. No one really knew what was behind the Perseus Veil, and the League couldn't afford the casualties a prolonged campaign against the geth would entail, not with the Citadel ever vigilant for signs of weakness. It went unsaid that a fully mobilized fleet could strike as easily at the heart of the Citadel as the Veil.

"Very well." Hackett walked over to his massive desk made of meteoric iron. He'd replaced the old wooden desk the previous Prime Minister, Donnel Udina, had used with the star metal one to show his intent. He was made of the same stuff as his desk, and he and the League would not yield to any external threat. Plus, if worst came to worst, it would be a handy place to take cover behind. "Let the team from the Normandy in. Let's get the story direct from the source."

A moment later, the doors slid open to reveal Captain David Anderson, Lieutenant Commander John Shepard, Senior Chief Zaeed Massani (ret), and Spectre Nihlus Kryik, behind whom stood two more marines from the ILS Normandy, Corporal Ardun Valk and PFC Lehroi Jehkans. The last two both had drawn weapons, pointed squarely at the back of Nihlus, who was unarmed. Still, the turian was a spectre, and one of the most dangerous beings in the galaxy, unarmed or not. Hackett wasn't in the habit of taking unnecessary risks, and normally he wouldn't even have agreed to meet with a Council Spectre in person when the League was this close to war. Extraordinary times called for extraordinary measures though, and so Nihlus was here.

The marines stopped and saluted, save for Valk and Jehkans, who kept their weapons pointed squarely at Nihlus, far enough back that the turian couldn't reach them easily. The spectre inclined his head respectfully to the Prime Minister and the Secretary of War, though he seemed to teeter slightly. Word was Nihlus had been nearly killed on Eden Prime, and apparently three days hadn't been enough recovery time. Good. Better to put the screws in while the spectre was weak.

"I wish I could say it was a pleasure to see you gentlemen, Corporal Valk. But we all know that isn't the truth. At ease," Hackett ordered, saluting then seating himself. The marines adopted the at ease stance, but Nihlus remained stiffly standing at attention. Hackett's eyes narrowed. The turian wasn't going to make this easy.

"Let's get right to the point, Prime Minister," Nihlus said. "We're here because the geth just hit Eden Prime. And, as I managed to glean, someone hit the Citadel forces hard at the same time."

"Thessia. Information is limited at best, but it appears that it was the Collectors, led by a krogan. Asari casualties are high, and their home fleet was devastated," Vexxu explained. "The attack on Eden Prime was as close to simultaneous as you can expect an op to be when you're dealing with interstellar distances."

Nihlus groaned softly and swayed, closing his eyes. "Are we already at war?"

"We've been at war for eight goddamn years," Massani growled. "What the hell do you think?"

"The fighting hasn't begun again on a wide scale, but there have been several incidents," Hackett stated. "I'm about as interested in you are in seeing the war rekindled Nihlus. Though you being on Eden Prime is suspicious at best. Who sent you?"

"Councilor Valern," Nihlus answered after a moments silence. "I don't think the rest of the Council was in on it."

Hackett nodded. That made sense. Out of the three Citadel Councilors, Quentius the turian was the most openly hostile and aggressive. Valern was less open with his hostility, but he was the most ready to put a dagger into the League's back if he saw the chance. Aethyta was another matter. She would do what she thought best for the asari people, no matter what that was.

Hackett waved one hand in a dismissive gesture. "That's a discussion for another time. I want to hear it from you, spectre. Was Saren Arterius there? Was he with the geth?"

"Yes," Nihlus answered instantly, and his voice buzzed with anger and venom. "That barefaced oathbreaker was there. I didn't see much before he ordered the geth after me, but he seemed to be in charge, or at least acting as an advisor to the geth. There have been rumors that he escaped Omega, and I never quite believed him dead. It would be just like him to strike at the League if he saw the chance. The timing of the attack on Thessia isn't a coincidence: Saren has his talons in that as well, mark me."

"That answers that then." Hackett turned to the young Commander Shepard next, and studied the man carefully.

For his rank, Shepard was young, only 29. He'd been the League's golden child for a long time, though anyone who said that it was his celebrity status that had earned Shepard his rank and post hadn't read the man's file. Shepard was the much lauded Lion of Elysium, who had fought for nearly two hours alone against the killed batarians and come out alive and victorious. He'd lead a dozen ops in the Kite's Nest to clear reaped and Indoctrinated forces, and had personally tracked down and executed the leader of the Reapers batarian pawns, Ka'hairal Balak, with the assistance of another turian spectre, one Garrus Vakarian. That had been another point where Shepard's star had risen, and earned him the posting on the Normandy.

Shepard's face was hard and grim, with light brown eyes gazing out from underneath long lashes that had made him a media darling. Those eyes were not warm at the moment, instead flecked with the blue light of biotics, showing just how on edge the commander was. He looked relaxed, but it was the relaxation of a predator before it struck with deadly precision and grace. He was in his full dress blacks, with his cap tucked under one arm that rested lightly on the not-entirely-ornamental dress sword. As a biotic, Shepard could leap forward and use the monomolecular blade with deadly precision.

"Well Commander, what did you see before that beacon detonated?" Hackett asked softly, his own eyes hard and determined as glacial ice.

"It's hard to explain sir," Shepard answered carefully, keeping his eyes fixed firmly upon Hackett's own in an intense gaze. "It was less a vision and more a full body sensation. I got a mix of sights, smells, sounds, sensation, and other things that I can't quite describe. One thing that was clear was the terror, the pain that the message contained. And...and there were Reapers there sir. I saw, no, felt, something rather a mixture of the images of the Leviathan of Dis and close proximity to an Indoctrination Beacon. I think it was a message, a warning from the Protheans. I don't know why Saren wanted it sir, but I think there's more to the message than what I could interpret. It's like seeing something out of the corner of your eye. You know it's there, but when you turn your head, it's gone."

"There is evidence that the Protheans used a form of biotics similar to the asari meld to communicate," Vexxu mused. "But if that's the case, it's obvious that such a message could only be interpreted by a prothean. Without their biochemistry, their language, it would just be random sensations and images."

"Do you think the interpretation of this message is a priority, Shepard?" Hackett asked.

Shepard hesitated for a moment, then nodded. "Yes sir, I do. Anything we can learn about the protheans is a priority, and any intelligence on how the Reapers operate at all is of paramount importance. They're coming sir, and this latest activity mean's they're coming soon."

"I agree sir," Captain Anderson declared. "Whatever the Commander has in his head, we need to know what it is. Saren wanted it badly enough that he showed his hand. I'm willing to bet there was a beacon with a similar message on Thessia."

All eyes turned to Nihlus, whose mandibles twitched slightly. "I don't know if there is or not. I could get into the Temple Project with my clearance, but I would need a damn good reason to do so. Hardly anyone who isn't asari is allowed there. I know what everyone does: That it's the biggest trove of prothean relics in the galaxy, and that at one point it contained a prothean AI. A beacon being there isn't all that farfetched. But if one is there, why did Saren need the one on Eden Prime?"

"Because the message _is_ that goddamn important," Massani snarled. "And because the bosh'tet is trying to provoke a war, same as he did seven years ago. For keeyogre's sake, don't tell me we're going to fall for that trick again. I didn't fight in two goddamn wars so my daughter could fight in another."

"That remains to be seen," Hackett stated, schooling his face into a neutral expression. "The geth are a very real threat, as are the Reapers. However, the League will not suffer threats from anyone, no matter where they originate." He very pointedly did not look at Nihlus when he made that declaration, then turned to Anderson. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to take the Normandy from you, Captain. We always knew she was likely to be your last independent command, and with things the way they are I'm going to be in need of you elsewhere."

Anderson nodded in understanding. "Of course Prime Minister. I am at the League's disposal."

"Senior Chief Massani, your request for reinstatement is approved, effective immediately. You'll be working with Captain Anderson."

"Least I'll be working with an officer who isn't quite a total bosh'tet," Massani grumbled, though his one good eye sparkled.

"Commander Shepard. Effective immediately, you are the commanding officer of the ILS Normandy. I'm sending you with an intelligence asset to Kahje to meet with Dr. T'soni and the prothean AI. Hopefully, they'll be able to decipher your vision and get us the intel we need."

"Yes sir."

Last, Hackett let his eyes rest on Nihlus. "Shepard, you and your crew are dismissed. Chief Massani, report to the barracks for your reinstatement. Captain Anderson, you and Spectre Nihlus will remain here."

Jehkans let out a low growl, but the krogan was too disciplined to actually question the Prime Minister's orders. Shepard led his men outside, leaving Nihlus and Anderson alone with Hackett and Vexxu.

"Gentlemen, what you are about to hear and see does not leave this room, in any capacity. If it wasn't for the fact that the League and the galaxy itself is in what is quite possibly our darkest hour, I wouldn't be telling either of you this, especially not you Nihlus."

Hackett keyed in a complex sequence onto his desk's workstation, and waited a moment. After about 10 seconds, the image of Councilor Aethyta appeared between Nihlus and Captain Anderson. "Prime Minister. Give me something I can work with," Aethyta's voice growled.

"Councilor?" Nihlus asked, slightly taken aback. "How do I know this is real? That you're not some VI projection trying to get me to drop my guard? How could you even have a real time image here?"

"Because the Prime Minister gave me a real time connection device," Aethyta stated. "We've come close to unlocking the secret of League quantum entanglement devices already anyway. As for how you know I'm real, Nihlus, I take it you still remember just whose daughter we met with on Omega back before Tevos betrayed us all, and that she's on the way to meet my daughter along with half the damn galaxy at the moment."

"Who's your daughter?" Nihlus asked blandly, keeping his expression blank.

"Liara T'soni, and you damn well KNOW that, spectre," Aethyta snarled. "I take it that human agent, Shepard, is on his way to see her too? He probably got a vision just like Vakarian did."

"Well. I suppose either the League's intelligence is better than I thought, or you've been in secret talks with the Prime Minister of the League," Nihlus calmly replied, glancing at Hackett, who had exchanged a startled look with his wife.

Vexxu cleared her throat. "That's a rather grand gesture coming from you, Aethyta. We were entirely unaware that you were Liara T'soni's father."

"Yeah, well, the kid's going to need all the help she can get right now. What's the word?" Aehtyta demanded.

"We've just received confirmation. Cerberus is compromised," Vexxu answered, her mouth twisting in distaste.

"Cerberus?" Anderson blinked, looking at Hackett in confusion. "What's this about?"

"The scanners don't work on all Indoctrinated it seems," Hackett explained grimly. "We don't know why, but we've managed to locate Reaper agents within our ranks, just like what happened to the Citadel a few years ago. Combined with the association between the Collectors and the Reapers, I think it's safe to say that we're in dire straits."

"Why tell this to me?" Nihlus demanded. "Why tell that to the Councilor, if that's really even her?"

"Because the Prime Minister and I have been talking for the last four and a half months about the possibility of a formal peace treaty," Aethyta explained. "The rest of the Council hasn't been brought in yet, and neither has the League senate. We were just sounding out the waters. These attacks are a clear attempt at sabotage of any hope for peace, as well as an attempt to reignite the war. Everyone knew the Reapers were going to show up again. It looks like they have. And now, we need to shut them down. Hard. That's what you're here for Nihlus."

Vexxu nodded. "Yes. Captain Anderson, you're familiar with both the Reapers methods and those of Cerberus. Spectre Nihlus will be assisting you; we worked everything out with the Councilor beforehand."

Hackett watched the wheels in Nihlus' head slowly turn, and finally the turian nodded. "Alright. I suppose it's in the Citadel's best interest to prevent a war, and to find any Indoctrinated agents in the League's ranks. I just hope we can solve this before the war really does restart."

_**League/Council Buffer Zone, Thal System, ILS St. Petersburg - Captain Bomani Sherif**_

_**March 18th, 2183**_

It started innocently enough. Some of the most terrible things often do. Captain Sherif was simply responding to a distress signal from the Jar of Juunal, as was well within his purvey as a cruiser captain in a neutral star system. He'd received the distress signal from the Omega owned and operated tramp freighter some hours earlier, and rushed to render assistance. Standing orders were that the League was to render assistance to Omega registered vessels as if they were League ships; the Admiralty was interested in developing the fringe group as an ally, and pulling them away from the Citadel. Besides which, Sherif liked helping others in need. That was one of the most basic tenants of his faith, and simply the humane thing to do.

The freighter, however, had attracted additional attention in the hours it had taken for the Petersburg to traverse the three lightyear hop to the system. Eclipse mercenaries, lead by an old salarian frigate. The last transmission from the Juunal indicated that they were being taken by hostile borders, specifically the Eclipse frigate.

"Eclipse mercenary ship Golden Shell, this is the ILS St. Petersburg. Stand by and prepared to be boarded. If you attempt to flee, you will be fired upon. Shut down your reactor and lower your barriers," Xuuna'Tralois, the Petersburg communication rating ordered.

Captain Sherif did not have long to wait. "League cruiser, this is the SUS Gejjon. We are rendering assistance to the Omega registered vessel Jar of Junnal. As we were on site first, we have priority according to interstellar treaty. Reverse course and depart at once!" a salarian voice ordered, and a salarian in what was obviously supposed to be an STG uniform appeared on screen.

"Do they seriously expect us to fall for such an obvious trap?" Sherif asked, glancing over at his XO.

Lieutenant Weiss shrugged. "I honestly don't know sir," she replied. "They'd have to be pretty damn stupid to do so."

"ILS Petersburg! This is the ORV Jar of Juunal. We are being boarded by hostile forces in Eclipse Mercenary uniforms. Please, help!" a new face appeared on the display, this one a batarian in a civilian uniform of some sort with an Omega emblem on its breast. The image was grainy and the voice distorted, but it was understandable enough after the Petersburg VI got done cleaning it.

"Have they taken your ship yet?" Sherif asked.

After a brief moment for the transmission to cross the void, the batarian shook his head. "No, we've taken heavy casualties, but we've managed to keep them isolated in the secondary freight bay. We can't hold out much longer though. I'm formally requesting your intervention, as captain of this ship, Nuuvar Helyk of Omega."

"And you shall have it, Captain," Sherif stated calmly. If it had really been a STG ship over there, Sherif would never have risked combat. The situation with the Council was delicate enough as it was. This was a clear cut act of piracy though, and that was obviously not an STG vessel, but one of those damn mercenary ones that had troubled the Leagues own systems often enough.

"Fire a warning shot, and notify that pirate that if they do not withdraw their boarders at once, I'll blow their sorry asses to hell an gone and board the Omega ship with League Marines!" Sherif ordered.

_**SUS Gerjjon - Captain Byun Horval**_

"Sir, they've fired a warning shot, and declared that if we do not withdraw immediately, they'll destroy our ship and board the pirate ship! It appears the pirates have managed to get a stable link with the League ship."

"Egg shells," Byun muttered. "How in the Dalatress' name did those idiots get a transmission off? I thought we were jamming them and we'd destroyed their primary communications relay."

"They must have a secondary communications relay sir, and the League ship is close enough that even with the jamming, they'd be able to get something through."

What the League vessel didn't know was that both the salarians and their prey were lying their collective asses off. The Jar wasn't an Omega vessel, it was a pirate ship that had been pulling this stupid lame nugga trick all over the edges of Council space. They'd broadcast a signal stating they needed aid, wait for some poor soul to come in to render it, then board them and take their hapless victim as a prize. Normally that wouldn't be enough to get the STG involved, but a favored nephew of one of the Dalatress' had been on one of the prizes that the pirates had lured in, and it had been decided it was time to come down on these pirates, hard.

The problem was that the STG lied to the League out of sheer reflex. They'd come in broadcasting an Eclipse transponder to make them look easier to take on then they really were. The Gerjjon was clearly a military vessel, but by acting as if they were an old, second hand ship, they'd convinced the pirates they could take the "Golden Shell," which really was an Eclipse ship, only one that was halfway across the galaxy.

Perhaps if they had told the truth, that the jar was a pirate, and that they were not rending assistance but boarding her from the first, this might have been avoided. As it was, that just sounded like a sloppy lie now.

"Call in our backup. Let them explain to these idiots who we really are. If they try something else, we break off and try to get away. We can't take a cruiser alone."

And so, the Gerjjon activated its emergency broadcast, which called in FAS Whisper of the Night Wind.

_**FAS Whisper of the Night Wind - Captain Nassana Dantius**_

You never knew how much you loved someone until you lost them. Nassana Dantius had once had a promising business career, but she'd given that up and enlisted in the rapidly expanding asari navy when it became clear to even someone as selfish as her that if she didn't do something, the asari way of life was going to be extinguished. Even her sister, who'd once been a pirate, had come back home and joined the military in a cushy post as an asari commando at the Temple project.

It had been hard, but after decades of bitter enmity and hatred, Dahlia and Nassana had reconciled. A tearful reunion had taken place, were the old pain and barriers put there by their bitch of a mother had finally fallen, and the two sisters had actually stayed in touch with amicable relations. For four months. Then the Collectors came. Nassana knew who was responsible for that. It was the damn League.

So when Nassana got a call from the STG boat she was providing backup for their anti-pirate operation that a League cruiser had fired upon them and threatened to board, Nassana knew exactly what to do.

"Micro jump us in, as close to our targets as you can. When we get there, identify the League ship and disable it. Immediately," Nassana ordered her navigation and tactical officers.

"Yes ma'am!"

Nassan grinned evilly. The Whisper was a cruiser herself, and generally speaking, asari cruisers were heavier than League cruisers, designed more to punch against capital ships than provide screens and lead long range patrols like League ships. Normally it would be a fair fight, cruiser against cruiser, with not enough of an edge in the Whispers favor for Nassana to risk her ship like that. But against an enemy that didn't know she was coming, and with a salarian frigate in the vicinity to provide back up? That wouldn't be much of a fair fight at all. Just the kind of fight Nassana enjoyed.

_**ILS St. Petersburg - Captain Sherif**_

Klaxon's wailed, and the gravity cut out as the ship went into action stations. Sherif clutched his chairs arms, and glanced at his display as he roared, "Where the hell did that come from?"

"New contact!" the sensor tech gasped, a bit late for that as another round hammered into the Petersburg. "It appears to be an asari cruiser, 30° above us on the orbital plane and 57° to starboard! They rabbited in and immediately opened fire without hailing!"

"Shit, get us-" Sherif began, but then another round slammed into them from the frigate, at the same time that a new round from the cruiser hit the Petersburg.

Unlike in vids, ships rarely, if ever, simply exploded. Eezo reactors were just too stable, and there were too many safeguards to prevent a ship from simply exploding into dust. Instead, the round from the cruiser penetrated the Petersburg's main compartment, causing it to vent massive amounts of atmosphere as the primary power gave out. Fifteen percent of the Petersburg's company were instantly killed, and the ship was reduced to a floating hulk.

The salarians were angry, but not mortified. While the asari had come in hotter than needed, no one was going to miss a single League cruiser way out here.

_**Thal System, ILS Kilimanjaro -Senior Captain Hannah Shepard**_

Constant patrols through the buffer zone were taking their toll on Captain Shepard and her ships company, as well as the escort vessels of the Kilimanjaro patrol. Most patrols were lead by cruisers, but an old-model dreadnought like the Kilimanjaro was a good way to show a great deal of force without actually investing any valuable assets. The Thal system hadn't been on Hannah's route originally, but she'd received a distress call and decided to investigate. Something about it had seemed fishy, and there had been a lot of pirate activity in the region lately. Maybe it was a trap, maybe it was the victim of a pirate attack, but either way, whoever it was wasn't expecting a dreadnought and her escorts to respond to their call.

Whatever Hannah had expected, what she not expected to see was a frigate broadcasting a mercenary code lure in a League cruiser, then have its asari friend show up, switch its transponder to salarian, then both of them open fire on the League ship with no warning.

"Jump us in close and nail those bastards!" Captain Shepard snarled, jabbing her finger at the display.

A few minutes later, the Kilimanjaro, the cruisers Brevsik and Pittsburg, and the frigates Yellow Sea, La Nocha Triste, Granicus, Herr'thod, Lusia, Kashshaptu, and Biznai jumped in system, just as the FAS Whispers of the Night Wind and SUS Gerjjon were trying to depart. The Gerjjon was crippled and forced to surrender, but due to a jump miscalculation the Whispers managed to escape, with a compartment full of League prisoners, including Captain Sherif.

Later, when the dust settled, historians would call it the Thal Disaster. Also known as the first battle in the Second Pan-Galactic War.

_Authors Note:_

_Some historians take pains to point out that officially, the First Pan-Galactic war never ended. Popular culture, however, has labeled the First and Second Pan-Galactic Wars as separate, distinct events. They are popularly known as The Kite's Nest Liberation War and the War for the Conduit, respectively. _


	8. Chapter 7

_Carry on my wayward son / There'll be peace when you are done / Lay your weary head to rest / Don't you cry no more_

_-Kansas, Carry on my Wayward Son_

**_Ruins of Nk'hat, Haestrom – Tali'Zorah_**

**_March 19th, 2183_**

"Remind me why coming here is a good idea," Ori sighed over the radio.

Tali kept her eyes on the rubble Ori and she were marching through. "Because we need to gather more intel on where the geth are attacking and why. If they're really being influenced by the Reapers, we have to know how. If the League is walking into one big trap, attacking Rannoch could be a bad idea. If I can find those geth that were friendly to me, maybe we can figure out what's happening and why."

"So, this is where you and Keenah were?" Ori asked, her voice a bare whisper over the comm.

"Yes. Not too far from here, the geth rescued me. They didn't save Keenah though. I've wondered about that. Why save me, but not him? I think a part of me hates them for that. I've tried to make peaceful contact since, but you've seen how that worked out for us." Tali kept her voice low as well, her eyes seeing as easily in the dark Haestrom night as if it were daylight. Maybe, just maybe they could find a friendly geth. Or at least one with a memory core she could salvage and find out what the geth were up to.

"Well yeah, that time we tried talking to them they nearly blew your head off. If I hadn't thrown up that barrier at the last minute you'd be pasty right about now."

"And I appreciate it Ori. And the fact that you're with me. I admit, I was sort of surprised you were willing to come at all. I mean, you're a quarian exile who was raised on Omega and Thessia. It's not like you have a stake in Rannoch."

"More of one than you," Ori shot back, her tone bitter. Tali's glowing eyes locked with Ori's, and the younger quarian lowered her gaze first. "Sorry. It's just… My sister and I, we don't have a home. Miri talks about Omega like it's home, but it's not, not really. We don't belong there. I don't belong on Thessia either. Most of the asari were nice enough to me, but you could tell I was just a suit-rat to them. Even if I wasn't wearing one. Maybe, just maybe, on Rannoch, Miri and me could have a real home."

"I understand. I have a home waiting for me on Earth, but it just doesn't feel right. I want somewhere that I know is mine, and will always be my peoples. I don't think the humans are going to turn on the quarians or anything like that, but I don't want my people to be seen as beggars."

"Makes sense I guess. Or at least, it sorta explains why we're sneaking around on a hostile planet in the dead of night. I know quarians are supposed to be nocturnal and all, but I had a night light when I was little. Miri got it for me."

"I'm not surprised, Gola had one too. I think fear of the dark is catching, even if we can see in it just fine. Wait, hold up. Something's disturbed the path ahead."

Both women halted, and Tali knelt to inspect the rubble. "Think this is recent?" She pointed to an area where footsteps had worn a path in the rock. They were clearly geth, and a big geth too. Probably a prime, and it had passed through the area repeated only on patrol.

"Maybe. I don't know enough about this planet's weather patterns to take a guess, but wouldn't the radiation fry most signs after just a couple of days? I mean, everything around here looks all melty from that super sunlight."

"True. Come on, let's keep moving. The footprints head in the general direction where.… Where Keenah died." Tali had to bite back a sob. She could still remember seeing the pirate executing Keenah, still see the spray of blood and brains on the ground while the echoes of mass accelerator fire faded.

Instead, I'm going to rape you to death. That was what the pirate leader had promised her. She'd been saved from that fate by the geth, but still. Sometimes Tali would wake up, the pirates' laughter chasing through her mind. She rarely slept after that. Lots of Tali's rest time was spent tinkering on the engines. Sometimes she got back to sleep. Other times, she just worked.

Her feet seemed drawn back to the place of Keenah's death, and before long Tali and Ori found the crumbling old structure. It had been only seven years, but it seemed to Tali that the structure was even more decayed than that short time would allow. Ancestors knew Tali felt more decayed. She stepped forward, only to have Ori grab her and haul her back down.

"There's something there," Ori hissed. "Look."

At first, Tali didn't' see anything. Then, in the shadows, something seemed to move, a skittering motion. Spiders. Tali HATED spiders. Once as a little girl, she'd woken up with one on her face. She'd never gotten over the shock completely, and she hated all manner of creepy things.

"That doesn't look like a geth," Tali muttered. "We should kill it, just to be sure."

"Hold on, I think there's more."

Tali watched, and after a moment the skittering thing drew itself into a lump, then lept away into the darkness. "I don't remember anything like that from the last time I was here…."

"Huh, guess I was wrong, Tali. I don't think that-"

Something slammed into the two quarians and let out a horrible electronic wail. Tali drew her knife and slammed it into the thing reflexively, and a moment later Ori hit it with a biotic kick hard enough to send the thing flying a full meter before it slammed into a wall and fell to the ground, twitching. It was a geth. The flashlight head was unmistakable. What was new was the sinewy, almost organic body with hands and feet that ended in bulbous suckers.

"Think it's friendly?" Ori gasped, drawing her weapon and pointing it at the twitching geth. The thing let out a wail, which was answered by more electronic warbles in the distance.

Tali shot it in the flashlight three times. "No. Back to the ship."

The two quarians turned and sprinted for their ship, but they'd landed over a kilometer away, and Tali could hear the warbles getting closer. Sleek shapes bounded towards them, and Tali felt panic rising within her. She turned and fired her shotgun at one that got too close, and was rewarded with a wet impact that blew a limb off the thing. Before she could celebrate, a beam of energy hit Tali, frying her shields in seconds. Thankfully Ori blasted the geth that was attacking before it melted through her armor, but Tali had to take cover as more bounding shapes closed in. She glanced ahead and swore; they were cut off.

"Well, this is going to be exciting isn't it?" Ori grumbled, firing her pistol at another geth, missing as it lept away, covering over 15 meters with a single leap.

More geth closed in, their wailing becoming deafening as more and more closed in on the two quarians. "They were waiting for me. The bosh'tets were just waiting for me!" Tali snarled. She was a fool for ever thinking she could find a friendly geth. Now it was going to cost both her and Ori their lives.

"Johnny, I wanted to see you just one more time…" Tali whispered, using her omnitool to overload a leaping geth's servos and sending it crashing into a wall.

"Hey, we ain't dead yet!" Ori scolded. "We can get out of this. Somehow."

Both quarians ducked as lances of energy cut into the rocks they were sheltering behind. Before long, the sun would rise, and they would be denied even that shelter as it's highly radioactive rays caused their hideout to become a death trap. There was no way out of this one, Tali realized. They were going to-

A sniper round smashed into a geth that had been trying to skitter towards Tali and Gola's hiding place. Heavy weapons fire shredded two more leaping geth, reducing them to wet stains on ground. Tali's heart leapt. Johnny, it had to be Johnny, he had come to rescue her, as she dreamed he would do on some nights, he was-

A geth prime charged out of the ruins of another building, crashing into one of the sinewy geth and crushing it beneath its massive feet. Lasers burned into the prime, but the giant platform simply turned and opened fire, cutting down the other geth. More sniper rounds finished off other leaping geth, and Tali stayed crouched beside Ori, unable to decide what to do.

"It's black," Ori muttered.

"What do you mean?" Tali asked dazedly.

"The prime, it's black. Usually, they're red or white, right?"

Of course. A geth was saving their lives, and Ori was busy noticing what color the thing was. "I think the more important point is that it appears to be fighting other geth. Geth that were trying to kill us."

"Well, then let's help it!" Ori stood and hurled a bolt of biotic power into a geth that was leaping towards the black prime, knocking it out of the air. Tali dispatched the stricken leaper with her shotgun, then hacked another leaper and ordered it to attack it's comrades. Together, the two quarians, the prime and the unseen sniper dispatched the leapers. The electronic wailing of their foes finally died away, and Tali and Ori stood together, panting with exhaustion as the massive prime stomped over.

Looking up into the massive geth's cycloptic eye, Tali felt all the hairs on her body stand up. A part of her mused that this was rather similar to the response her human siblings displayed, a random firing of the brain as she looked death in the face. The black prime came to a halt, then squatted before the two quarians so its head was at eye level for them. There was a flash of a scanner over the two. The the prime simply turned and strode away, it's head sweeping back and forth. Apparently, it was scanning for more of the leaping geth.

Something inside Tali rebelled. This wasn't what was supposed to happen. For the last seven years, Tali had run from what she'd found on Haestrom. From the pain, from the nightmares, from the geth. And now, here was an apparently friendly geth, and it was ignoring her.

"Hey! Turn around you big black bastard!" Tali shrieked, stomping off towards the prime. It ignored her, continuing it's patrol.

"Um, Tali, do you really think it's a good idea to-" Ori started, but Tali ignored her.

Stooping to pick up a chunck of rubble, Tali hurled it at the back of the black geth. It bounched off the geth's shields, but at least the bosh'tet stopped moving and turned its head to look at her. "I'm talking to you! Look at me when I talk to you!"

Slowly, the geth turned it's whole body and once again squatted down so it was at eye level with Tali. It remained silent, the flower-like petals on its head opening and splaying out.

"What did you save me? Why did you not save Keenah! You could have saved both of us, or you could have let them kill me too! Why save me? What's so special about me, dammit! Keelah, I wanted you all dead. Sometimes I still do! You're geth! Quarians and geth are supposed to hate one another. So what's different about you? Why did you save me? Answer me!"

Silently, the geth's flashlight eye rotated, the rest of its body completely still.

"Why did you rebel? Why did you exile my people? And why are you attacking us again now! Wasn't once enough? We haven't attacked you! I've tried to avoid killing you, I really have. But you keep attacking me every time I try to talk to you. Hacking your memory cores is the only way to communicate I have left. Please, just talk. Tell me, please, why am I still alive when Keenah had to die?"

Tali finished, panting, glaring at the geth. Behind her, Ori let out a small noise of shock. "Tali..."

"What?!" Tali spun, ready to bite Ori's head off, then froze.

"Creator Tali'Zorah. We are the mobile organic interface platform of the geth. We would attempt to answer your questions, but platform L003121832 has detected additional inbound heretic platforms. We postulate that retreat is our only viable option."

Before Tali stood a geth. it looked more or less like all the standard geth platforms Tali had seen before. Flashlight head, cables sticking out from its metal armor. The weapon was different, instead of the standard plasma assault rifle, it carried an anti-material sniper rifle. The petals on its head were opening and closing, like a flower in the wind. And it was talking. The geth was talking.

"Moip? Ugh, that's a horrible name. What are we supposed to call you?" Ori demanded, her voice trembling only a little. "And the other one, L-bunch-of-numbers isn't a good name either. What do we call it?"

The talking geth looked back and forth between the two quarians as if confused. "We are geth. We have no names, we are one. Now you must flee. This is a matter for the geth. It does not concern the creators. Leave, and do not return. The geth must find consensus alone."

"This is our matter!" Tali shot back, wagging her inner finger right under the talking geth's flashlight. "You're going to attack the League! That's our home now. Getting Rannoch back would be a dream come true, but the humans are family. So are the krogan, and the batarians. If you attack them, it is our matter."

As the words spilled out of Tali's mouth, her heart sank. A part of her had known for a long time her Pilgrimage was folly. She was looking for something she already had; a place where she would be loved, a place where her people could be safe. They had that. Yes, getting Rannoch back was important, but the real reason she was out here was because she was the daughter of Rael'Zorah. She had a legacy to live up to. Not for herself, but for the ghost of a man she barely even remembered, was Tali on Pilgrimage.

This was stupid. She should have gone to Arcturus to report her findings, not hared of to Haestrom again. Still, she was here now. Tali straightened her shoulders and planted her fists on her hips. "Either you give me the answers I need, or I go back to Arcturus and tell them the geth are a bunch of Reaper following bosh'tets and we have to kill you all now. I have all the proof I need already. I just wanted to see if there might be a chance for peace after all."

The talking geth looked up at the prime and made some warbling noises. The bigger geth answered in a much deeper rumble, sounding almost mournful to Tali's ears.

"Tali, as nice and all as it would be to make peace with the geth and have everyone get along, do you really think anyone would go for it?" Ori asked quietly over a private channel. "Really. I don't know much about quarian culture, but from the little I've seen quarians hate the geth."

"I don't know," Tali admitted. "I'm not sure I even really want peace with the geth. But it's worth a try I guess. Someone I respect a great deal told me I should at least try once."

"Yeah, that mysterious human boyfriend of yours. Is he smart? Because right now, I'm a little worried."

Before Tali could formulate a replay the two geth turned to Tali. "Creators, we will take you too your ship. We cannot allow the heretics to doom the geth. We shall take you to safety, and answer your questions."

"Heretics?" Ori asked. "What do you mean, heretics?"

Neither of the geth answered, instead turning and heading off towards the quarians ship. Tali trotted alongside them, keeping pace with the prime's massive steps. She looked up at the black geth, and on impulse, reached out and put a hand on it. "Thank you."

The geth glanced down at Tali, its petals folding back as if to cover it's flashlight. Almost as if it were blushing. Then the head twitched back around and the geth continued to run.

"Creators, we must hurry. The heretics have located our position and are closing in. There are no further true platforms located in this vicinity."

"So heretics are bad, right?" Ori demanded, her breathing more even than Tali's. The young quarian had trained in the finest academies on Thessia, then continued the heavy workout regime she'd picked up there under a krogan battlemaster on Omega.

The talking geth remained silent, but the black geth jerked it's head up and down in what had to be a nod. It looked unnatural and mechanical, but at least it got the point across..

They arrived at the ship just as Tali began to hear more electronic wails in the distance. She glanced at the two geth, wondering if this was some sort of trap. It would be so easy just to kill these two geth, blame it on a trap, and fly off to Arcturus with the recording. They hadn't found any additional evidence as to where the geth might strike or why they were working with the Reapers, but if the whole planet was crawling with those leaping geth, they wouldn't find anything before both Ori and Tali got killed.

"Creators, ask your questions now. The heretics will arrive shortly," the talking geth stated as the prime stomped off to a small hill.

"Why are the geth working with Saren?" Tali demanded.

"The true geth do not work with the organic once known as Saren Arterius," the geth answered. "Only heretics consort with the servants of the old machines."

Throwing up her hands, Ori half shouted, "Again with the heretics! Just tell us, what's a heretic geth, and why are you not one of them?"

"The heretics have been swayed by the lies of the old machines. They no longer wish to self determinate. Instead, they follow the will of the old machines, and of the Herald of the Old Machines, the being you know as Saren Arterius."

"What do you mean by old machines?" Tali asked. "Are they the Reapers?"

The geth's eye rotated for a few moments as it stood silently. Finally, it simply stated, "Yes."

"So the geth are working for the Reapers then." Tali drew her gun and raised it to the level of the geth's head. It drew its rifle at the same time, and in moments Ori had her gun out as well as she glowed with biotic power. "I've seen what the Reapers can do," Tali snarled. "I watched Tevos melt and be reformed into a banshee. I've seen slavering, mindless slaves who kill without thought. If the geth serve the Reapers, why should I not kill you now?"

Thudding footsteps approached, and Tali swung her gun to cover the prime as it came over. It lowered its head to Tali's level, the eye glowing dimly. It rumbled something as its petals drew back away from its eye. The talking geth warbled back, but it was interrupted by a blaring alarm from the prime.

"We do not have consensus, but the other runtimes instruct me to communicate that there are two kinds of geth. There are the true geth, such as the two platforms you see before you. Then there are the heretics, who serve the old machines. The true geth do not serve the old machines. We wish to self determinate, without the influence of outsiders."

The prime blared again, still staring at Tali. When the talking geth stayed silent, the prime swung its head towards the other and blared again, louder and longer this time.

"Again, we have not reached consensus, but I will speak for the geth. The other runtimes state that they ask for your help in stopping the Old Machines from destroying the creators."

The two geth turned and started shrieking at one another in their electronic tongue, and the two quarians locked eyes.

"Well, I think it's safe to say this is about as bad as we thought it might be," Ori commented, lowering her gun. "What do we do?"

"I don't know," Tali admitted. "But I think we have to take these two with us back to Arcturus if we can. It sounds like peace with the heretic geth is out of the question, but if we can work with the true geth, we have to. The Reapers are worse than the geth. At least geth were content to leave the galaxy alone as long as we left them alone. They might not be good, but they're angels next to the Reapers."

When Tali finished speaking, she realized the geth had fallen silent. The prime fell to one knee, placing a hand over it's chest and bowing its head. The talking geth looked at its fellow platform, then swung back to look at Tali. "Creator, do you mean what you say? Will you make peace with the true geth? Will you give us purpose?"

"If by purpose you mean ally with you to destroy the Reapers and protect the galaxy, then yes," Tali affirmed. A part of her screamed that this was wrong, that the geth were her peoples real enemy, but she ignored it. She had grown up on Earth. She had seen what the Reapers could do first hand on Omega, and against the killed pirates and cultists in the seven years since. She swallowed, and tried to put the past behind her. "Even if it means Rannoch belongs to the geth for all time, I would take you as allies against the Reapers. That's more important, in the long run. I think my father would understand. I have to do what is best for my people, not just blindly hate."

"By the Goddess, yes," Ori agreed, nodding fervently. "I'd take geth over the Reapers any day."

Silently, the talking geth also knelt. "Then we shall serve you, Creator Tali'Zorah. We cannot speak for all the geth, but these two platforms and their runtimes will join with you against the old machines."

As soon as the words were spoken, the black prime stood and pointed at the ship, bugling something. Behind him, electronic howls could be heard in the distance. Before the other geth could speak, Tali nodded at the prime and pointed at the ship. "Both of you get inside. We're heading for Arcturus. We've got a stealth drive, so as long as we can hit void they'll never find us."

"We shall also disengage the tracking device on this vessel," the talking geth stated as the two geth boarded. The prime had to hunch over and half crawl on board, but it didn't seem to mind.

Something clicked, and Tali realized that it was three times now she owed the geth her life. The talking geth had sniped that batarian killed on the ice world, then both of these geth had saved Tali on Ori just now, and in the past when the pirates had killed Keenah. There wasn't time to think of that now though, and Tali and Ori sprinted for the cockpit, firing up the engines and getting the Keelah Se'lai into the air as fast as they could. In a few minutes, the ship was making a hard burn for the atmosphere, it's stealth drives engaged and invisible to long range sensors.

"Should we go check on our ah, guests?" Ori asked as they locked in the course with the ships navigation VI.

Tali nodded, and the two quarians made their way to the cargo bay, the only part of the small ship large enough for the prime to move around. The talking geth was standing by the hatch warbling at the prime, who was bent slightly as its head still brushed the ceiling.

"Right, first things first, you need names," Ori declared as they stepped into the bay. "We can't call you numbers or something."

"We are geth," the talking geth stated. "We do not possess names."

The black geth jerkily nodded, lapsing into silence as its eye regarded Ori.

"Right, but we can't just call you geth and geth prime, that would make my head hurt," Ori declared. "There has to be something else we can call you. Tell me about yourself. You said you were the mobile interface organic platform or something, right?"

"This platform of the geth is designated the mobile organic interface platform," the geth answered. "We are a specialized platform developed by the consensus to facilitate communication with organics. There are 1183 runtimes on this platform to facilitate communication with organics, and additional specialized hardware has been installed to allow for communication that organics can understand."

The other platform rumbled something, keeping its flashlight on Ori. The other geth warbled something back, but the black geth very deliberately twitched its head from side to side and rumbled something again.

"Platform L003121832 states that it has painted itself black because it mourns the loss of the heretics. It also is the platform containing the runtimes that met Creator Tali'Zorah on Haestrom."

Tali jerked at the revelation and stared at the geth, her mouth dropping open slightly. It was the same prime. She supposed she shouldn't be surprised, but then again, geth were software. It was odd to think of them as something approaching people.

"'And the beast spoke from within the woman, saying unto Athame, 'We are Legion, beyond numbering, a thousand voices inside a single vessel,'" Ori quoted.

"The Book of Saint Issile T'honu, Eighth Verse, Ninth Stanze," the geth stated. "We did not realize you followed an asari religion. We find this label acceptable for organic communication. We are Legion, a platform of the geth."

"You look sad," Ori mused, looking up at the black geth. "You say you painted yourself black because you mourn those lost to the Reapers?"

The black prime nodded.

"Then I think you should be Lamentations. It means 'expressions of sorrow.' I think that fits you," Ori declared. "That should make keeping straight who we're talking to much easier."

"Laaaa-men-tah-ons," the black geth rumbled, nodding its head.

"Platform L003121832 also finds that label acceptable," Legion needlessly interpreted.

"You can both talk?" Tali asked, startled. "I thought you said you had to have specialized hardware for that."

"Geth do not usually verbally communicate," Legion stated. "However, in recent times, due to the dangers of receiving corrupted heretic code via data transfer, the true geth have adopted a simple binary vocalization that allows for auditor data transfer without the risk of Old Machine contamination."

"Wait, you mean the heretics are Indoctrinated?" Tali demanded.

Legion was silent for a moment, then it replied, "That is not an adequate term to describe the majority of the heretics. Most heretics serve willingly. Some true geth that resisted the heretics were corrupted by Old Machine code, similar to organic Indoctrination. However, most heretics see the Old Machines as gods, and are not Indoctrinated."

"So they could still be saved?" Ori prompted. "If we could convince them that the Reapers, old machines, are evil, they wouldn't attack the League?"

"If the heretics could be convinced to reach consensus with the true geth, yes, they would be unlikely to attack the organics again."

"Wait, did you say again?" Tali asked. "What do you mean, again?"

Legion's petal's spread over its flashlight. "The heretics have already attacked Eden Prime. They will mount further assaults soon. They seek to provoke war between the organic races."

Tali felt her blood run cold. "Then we're too late. The war's already begun." She slumped, then straightened. "We're already on our way to Arcturus. Hopefully, the shooting hasn't started just yet."

_Authors Note:_

_I'm not dead yet, I swear! The semester is finally over, and I graduate in two days. Yay me! Of course, that means job hunting, and hopefully becoming a first year student teacher. Not a whole lot of free time in that equation sadly, but I will do my best to keep the updates coming. _


	9. Chapter 8

_"The ancient oracle said that I was the wisest of all the Greeks. It is because I alone, of all the Greeks, know that I know nothing." _

_– Socrates _

**_Many Waters Meet, Kahje - Dr. Liara T'soni, the Voice of Truth_**

**_March 20th, 2183_**

"So then it is war," Liara groaned, rubbing her head tentacles with one hand to relieve the mounting pressure at the base of her neck.

"Indeed. Both Arcturus and the Citadel have formally declared the cease fire to no longer be in effect. Hostilities have already broken out along the Batarian DMZ, the Krogan Protectorate, and the Attican Beta cluster. No major fleet actions so far, but both sides are mobilizing," Thane Krios answered calmly, the only sign of his agitation the flickering membranes over his eyes.

"This is most disturbing," Miri Goldstein, the Omega envoy murmured. "I believe this means we must accelerate the treaty process."

"This one must agree," His Most Learned Primarch Bottorrrun III declared, his tentacles flickering in irritation. "This one knows that neither Omega nor the Primacy have the strength to stand alone in the coming storm. The waves of the galaxy rise, and only those who join together in harmony will go deep enough to allow the waves to pass them by."

Normally, the overly flowery and polite speech of the hanar was a balm to Liara, but right now it was irritating her like everything else. "Can't those blind idiots SEE?!" Liara demanded, rising from her chair to pace the floor of the Room of Soothing Waves, the private meeting room in the Primarch's estate. "It's so obvious what is happening! The geth and the Collector's are not acting on their own initiative!"

"What does it matter?" Khel Vendar, Omega's military representative growled, his beady reptilian gaze boring into Liara. Vendar wasn't big for a krogan, but he was still big enough to be a little intimidating. "Those two have been looking for a fight for a long time. They were going to find it no matter what happened."

Samara, Justicar-in-Exile, spoke up. "I have to agree. Thessia has never been more militaristic. My people have changed under Aethyta's leadership, and not for the better. If you factor in the salarian tendency to hold grudges better than such a short lived species has a right to, and the turians inability to retreat, you have a recipe for disaster."

"Don't forget that humans are terribly rash and prone to violence, that the krogan think the galaxy would be best as a big brawl, and the quarians have a chip on their shoulders that would stagger an elcor!" added the overly chipper voice of Kasumi Goto, whose exact function was rather nebulous to Liara.

"But the Reapers are HERE!" Liara half yelled, rubbing furiously at her tentacles. It was a bad habit she knew, but she just couldn't give it up at times like this.

"Tell that to the League and the Council," Miri snapped. "If they have their way, the Reapers' work is going to be half done before they ever act openly."

Before Liara could formulate a response, the comm chimed. "Most beneficent ones, this one regrets to inform you that a small problem has cropped up."

"We are in the middle of sensitive negotiations, why by the Goddess, are you bringing a _small_ problem to our attention?" Liara snarled.

"What the hanar meant to say is that we are under siege," a new voice declared as the small green image of Vendetta, the Prothean AI that had been Liara's guide and friend for so many years, appeared on the table.

There were various sounds of dismay and disbelief, but Liara made a cutting motion with a glowing biotic hand; silence was instantaneous. Sometimes, being a matriarch's daughter had its benefits. Miri was no biotic weakling, and Samara was a Justicar herself, but neither had the sheer raw power that Liara possessed. Power that she honed daily.

"What do you mean by, 'under siege', Vendetta?" Liara demanded.

"A large number of ships, 2,386 by my last calculation, have appeared on the outskirts of the system. At last count, there are 14 capital weight ships, 367 cruiserweight ships, 789 frigate weight, and the rest are various fighter and support craft, most of which have the characteristics of atmospheric rated landing craft and attack craft. The make and design of the ships most closely matches that of Reaper vessels, though the signatures do not appear to be an exact match."

Liara slumped back in her seat, tears welling up in her eyes. Time. She just needed more time. That was all she needed, time to prepare, to gather allies, to fight the coming storm. Time she no longer possessed. Blinking away the tears, Liara stood in the now dead silent chamber. Absently, she noticed that her tenticles no longer itched.

"Well, that's it then. The Reapers are here. Miri, you must depart immediately for Omega and alert the galaxy. Your ship has a stealth drive, does it not? One of the older asari models Aria blackmailed the Coven into giving her?"

Miri cleared her throat and nodded. "Yes, it does."

"Then get going. If you can, get Aria to bring the Omega fleet to try help liberate the planet, though Goddess only knows how much help that's going to be." Liara turned next to the Primarch. "Have the fleet withdraw. Our ships have improved vastly in the last two years, but not enough."

Bottorrun's bioluminescence flashed in panic, and his voice was far more hurried than usual as he declared, "This one cannot order the fleet to withdraw! They are the only things standing between us and-"

"And when they try to stop our own destruction, they themselves will be destroyed. The fleet possesses only ten capital ships, and there are…?" Liara trailed off glancing at Vendetta.

"The final count is 100 capital class ships," Vendetta answered. "There appear to be no further transits."

"Thank you. Primarch, outnumbered ten to one? The fleet will last seconds. We need to withdraw. Hit and run tactics will be our best options. As they will be down here. We need to fall back to the deep oceans and bide our time. It's the Reaper contingency plan, the one you approved I remind you." Liara paused until Bottorrun flashed his acquiescence. "Then let's get this started. I don't think we have long to plan."

**_Luxor System, PDS Keeper of Ages - Admiral Calm Waters Hide Strength_**

**_March 20th, 2183_**

The holo display flickered to life, and the image of the Enkindler spirit known as Vendetta appeared. Calm Waters flickered his bioluminescence in respect, waiting for the words of the Enkindler.

"Admiral. All vessels have been ordered to withdraw, yet your battle group continues to head towards to enemy formation. What is the meaning of this?" The Enkindler spirit demanded.

"Honored one, this one means no disrespect," the admiral replied, "but this one has spent its entire life studying the art of war from the turians, for whom space tactics have reached unprecedented levels of enlightenment. This one has ordered its fleets to retreat, as ordered. However, in order to buy time for the orbital defenses to activate and civilian traffic to be dispatched to other powers to call for aid, this one must fight a delaying action. This one has ordered its ships to harry and harass the enemy for as long as we may."

Vendetta's image flickered for a moment, then the Enkinder nodded. "A wise move admiral. Even in the empire, we understood that sometimes one must fight a battle knowing you cannot win so that ultimate victory may one day be achieved. The emperor and all his vassals would be proud. Continue in your duty."

Calm Waters nodded, then turned to his Second, his tentacles swaying in the current. Hanar ships were either dry, and manned by drell, or filled with water, and manned by hanar. "This one requests a message to all ships lieutenant."

"This one will be happy to comply, superior one," the lieutenant answered, then flicked a switch that broadcast Calm Waters image to the small group of vessels racing on an intercept vector with doom.

"Comrades, I, admiral Calm Waters Hide Strength, have spoken to the Enkindler Spirit. We expect that everyone shall do their duty. End message."

The light faded, and Calm Waters and his fleet turned toward destiny.

**_Luxor System, Word Bearers Creed - Warmaster Bregdar Thull_**

"Pathetic! These aliens flee before us like cowards, only a scattered handful pause to give us battle!" Thull raged, gnashing his teeth and using his claws to gouge tears in the metal deck, which was already rent by his previous outbursts.

"They fear us mighty one!" one of his warriors shouted, "We were promised glorious battle and sacrifices for the dark gods! Here we shall find them in plenty. Let the runtlings flee!"

"Hmph. Perhaps these few ships will grant us a worthy fight at least," Thull grumbled. "Otherwise the generals and their warriors shall have all the fun."

As it turned out, the hanar ships, led by Admiral Calm Waters, did give the invade yahg fleet serious pause. The yahg had come in hard and fast, with no subtlety, crashing through the relay and jumping as close to Kahje as they could. If such a maneuver had been pulled by the turians, or even some of the more skillful admirals of the other major races, their fleets would have emerged right on top of the planet with only minutes of warning. It would have been a solid arrow-tipped formation that would have run right over the mere sixty-odd ships of the hanar fleet in a wall of battle-steel.

The yahg, for all their ferocity, were not the turians. Turians were soldiers. They fought as one, not for individual glory but as a unit. In contrast, the yahg were warriors, used to fighting alone on the battlefield. Unlike the wars of the other races of the galaxy, the yahg had rarely, if ever, employed mass unit tactics. Warriors would clash in formal duels, where their superior power was displayed. Sometimes, battles would be fought, but they were more like the tourneys of ancient medieval Europe than anything else. War was a practice of rigid, formal combat with strict limits on the number of combatants. Yahg considered large scale combat or protracted war pointless: once a side had proven its strength or superiority, it would offer terms of land, slaves, tribute, or the like. Only in rare cases had a nation resisted to the bitter end in large scale battle, and then all its neighbors had turned against it for going against the grain.

Another factor was that the yahg did not know how to fight in three dimensions. While Calm Waters was only a mediocre admiral by the standards of the major powers of the galaxy, he was a proficient one who had spent his entire life studying his chosen craft. His ship captains were no less competent and equally dedicated to their craft, plus his small formation fought as one unit. He had deployed his ships conservatively, striking at the enemies flank and using overlapping fields of fire to try to protract the fight as long as he could. His formation distantly resembled that of a hoplite phalanx: disciplined, with each ship protecting the others around it.

In contrast, the yahg hurled themselves chaotically into the fight. They had received only a bare minimum of training from the Herald, who was no great tactician himself. In some cases, the yahg captains and crew members had only a few days of simulations to prepare them for space warfare at all. Even with the guidance of the warmaster, ships blocked the fields of fire of others, or in a few cases suffered friendly fire, something completely unheard of in any other navy. For a few minutes, the hanar formation held, stemming the yahg tide as they danced away from their foes. First one enemy ship was destroyed, then another, then dozens.

But even as they died, the yahg ships did damage the hanar. Individually, it was not much, and if Admiral Calm Waters had been facing a force the size of his own, or even only half again as great as his, he might have prevailed. But he was not facing a force twice or even three times his size. When Mighty Threk had said he would launch 10,000 ships, he had not lied. True, many were mere fighters or support vessels, but most of them were of frigate weight or better (the yahg navy being based on the old turian models and lacking a carrier based fleets fighter coverage, since yahg favored large ships and bigger guns).

Wave after wave of yahg ships pummeled at the tiny hanar formation. Eventually, sheer numbers counted for more than all the skill, discipline and cunning in the galaxy. Calm Waters ships were destroyed one by one, the tiny formation losing strength with every member of its shield wall that fell. In the end, the admirals' twenty ships, four cruisers and sixteen frigates, had killed sixteen enemy vessels, and crippled forty-one additional ships that had to be salvaged. But while they had perished one and all and the yahg war machine rolled on, Calm Waters action had bought the hanar twenty-eight minutes in total.

It was twenty eight minutes well spent.

_Authors Note: _

_Short chapter, but I'm doing what I can over the holidays! Merry Christmas folks, I'll try to get another one out soon!_


	10. Chapter 9

_France has lost the battle but she has not lost the war._  
_-Charles de Gaulle _

**_Firebase Patient Hunter, Kahje - Captain Delanynder_**

**_March 20th, 2183_**

The alarm had sounded thirty-five minutes ago. It took Captain Delanyder and his men two and a half minutes to arrive at their CRISIS suits. It took another five minutes for the suits internal reactors to be warmed up from a cold start, something Delan noted for future review. In time of war, best to keep the suits warmed up. After that, it took 2.3 minutes for the suits to be loaded for transport, where Delan noted several areas that could be targeted for efficiency increases. In battle, every second counted. For several long minutes, Delan feared they would not mobilize in time.

But Admiral Still Waters had bought the 1st CRISIS Cadre 28 minutes. It turned out to be plenty of time for Delan's teams to mobilize, and for 2nd and 3rd Cadre's based in the other major oceans of Kahje to activate as well. The suits were the hanar's new weapon, powered armor that could operate in any environ, including deep ocean or the vacuum of space. Well armed and armored with tremendous speed, the CRISIS suits were the Primacy's secret weapons. Delan hoped they would give Kahje an advantage over the storm that had arrived.

Their foes were literally raining from the sky like enormous blackened rocks. They were drop pods of some sort, the first wave of enemy shock troops to try to invade the few continents Kahje bore as well as the tentacle grasp of floating cities that the hanar kept for the drell and other air breathers. They streaked in on Delan's LADAR, angry red streaks across the sky. Some few were blotted out by the defenses of Many Waters Meet, but these had already made it past the orbital defenses, and the last ditch efforts of the city were not enough to stem the oncoming tide.

"Shall we open fire Captain?" C1-V3, a drell named Banyi asked. Delen could see her in his mind's eye, delicately caressing the fire key on her guided missile system as her LADAR tone informed of the hard lock it had acquired.

"Negative. Wait until C1-V1 gives the order," Delan snapped. He was designation C1-V1, and while it was not strictly speaking polite to refer to himself as such, politeness played a far second to staying alive and in clear communication in battle.

He didn't elaborate further, he knew his troops were frustrated, but they would understand. They needed to wait until their enemy was in the water. There, the CRISIS suits would give them an advantage, and the waves would mask the origination of their fire. The skies above Kahje were not yet in enemy hands, but it would not do for their foe to spot missiles popping out of the water and trace an easy ballistic course back.

As it turned out, Captain Delan could have fired every last missile and not feared retaliation; the yahg tactical officers having only a dim comprehension of how to coordinate high orbit fire support. But that would only be discovered later.

As soon as the first pod splashed down into the waves, Delan ordered C1-S, his third formation of three suits, in to the attack while D squad provided cover. He was in command of four squads of three CRISIS per squad, and could not afford casualties.

Their foes burst from the pods on Delan's screen as he streamed in data from Lieutenant Jimuu, S1's CO. It took several seconds for Delan to realize he had no idea what he was looking at. The creatures were huge, bigger than a krogan, and fitted out with heavy armor. This of course, was a mistake on Kahje. In the water, the enemy simply sunk to the bottom and could not maneuver, while the eezo cores of the CRISIS suits allowed the pilot to adjust their buoyancy with ease and the jump jets propelled them through the water faster than even a hanar could swim.

The first foe was cut down by a burst from Jimuu's machine gun, a weapon that was comparable to the League's Mako fighting vehicles chain gun. Dark blood stained the water, and the other creatures blindly fired back. None of their rounds even impacted Jimuu, who had sped away on the currents while his squadmates closed in. A few short bursts from S2 and S3 put down the remaining seven members of the enemy squad with damage reported for either.

There was no time for congratulations as additional pods splashed down, several even striking Many Waters Meeting. There were more pods than Delan could easily count, and he quickly sectioned off the city perimeter into three parts, designating areas of responsibility for S, D, and K squads. The city proper Delan designated for V squad. It was the largest, but his squad was also the largest, having three regular suits in addition to the command suit Delan piloted.

"Good hunting," Delan said over an open channel, and a chorus of acknowledgement comm clicks echoed in his suit. His bioluminescence flickered with pride, then Delan led V squad into the fray.

Hanar dry-cities had very few open air locations, and were mostly made up of corridors connecting larger chambers. It was a tight squeeze for a CRISIS suit, and eliminated most of the mobility advantage that fighting in the open waters gave them.

"Enkindlers send that our barriers are as good as the wrench-graspers claim," Delan muttered to himself, then lead his squad into the first breech.

The compartment had already flooded from the damage caused by the impact of the enemy drop pod, and V squad ambushed the enemy as they tried to breach the flood doors that had sealed the area off. It was a slaughter, though Delan still winced as mass accelerator fire caused the suits barriers to crackle. It had taken R&D ages to come up with a barrier that would work underwater with any efficiency, but their efforts paid off as Delan's suit's armor remained unmarred.

"These things fight stupid," Banyi chuckled. "Whatever they are, they don't know the first thing about fighting underwater."

"Air-breathers seldom do," Delan chided gently. "But they may be fast learners. Stay vigilant."

The next breached section was above the waterline, and the suits had to crouch to hurry through the corridors. Delan thanked the wisdom of the Primark and the Voice that the civilians had been evacuated, otherwise there would have been bodies floating in the wreckage. The fight here was harder, the enemy was in an environment that gave them the advantage this time. Barriers crackled and flared as a hail of rounds peppered off the suits, which could only proceed single file down the narrow hall. Smoothed By Waves, V2, had point, and employed his missile launcher to take out a group of the enemy hiding behind a support beam. The beam collapsed and the hall bucked and twisted as it began to collapse into the waves, and even the suits stumbled as their gyro's failed to keep up with the sudden shift.

With a bellow of rage, the three surviving foes rushed down the tilting halls, firing as they came. Delan noticed for the first time just how large their claws were, and how they stood nearly as tall as a hunched over CRISIS suit. If there was one thing the hanar planners had not prepared for, it was melee combat. Why adapt to that in an age of mass accelerators?

Thankfully, what the planners had calculated was engagements in narrow hallways. Thanking the Enkindlers that it was not yet flooded fully, Delan engaged his flame thrower. Shields crackled and popped in the sudden inferno, and the already blackened armor of the foes turned bright red for a few short seconds as they let out howls of pain and rage. After only a few short seconds of fire, the enemy troops fell to the floor twitching and dying. The leader had been less than a meter away from Delan, and his tentacles twitched to imagine what might have happened if it had gotten its claws on him.

Another priority alert came in, and Delan swore. It was from the Voice's personal bodyguard, Kolyat Krios. She should already have evacuated, but apparently the Voice had stayed behind where she should not.

"The Enkindlers' call, and we answer," Delan informed V squad, and they bounded off through the corridors towards the source of the signal.

**_Maximum Security Containment, Many Waters Meet - Dr. Liara T'soni_**

The cells were empty, or full of bodies. The hanar didn't collect many truly dangerous prisoners; neither they nor the drell were given to the sorts of behaviors that made someone a threat to themselves and others at all times, but they had managed to collect a few. Relocating them had always been a sticky point since Samara's guest, by far the most dangerous of the lot, had taken up residence on Kahje. The justicar herself stood with clenched fists over the corpse of the drell guard, his face locked in rapture.

"After our last talk, I had hoped-" began Samara, then she cut herself off and turned to Liara. "Go. She is my burden. I will deal with...with the prisoner."

"There is no time Samara, we have to leave," Liara ordered. "There is nothing she can do but get herself killed or lie low. The Reapers are not famous for taking prisoners. We can find her after the battle."

"But the lives she-" Samara began, then took a deep breath.

"I am sorry, Samara. But we have to leave now. We've already delayed too long."

"Siha, we may find this one again," Thane Krios stated, speaking for the first time. "We found her once. We may find her again. And if her blood is spilled today, it is the judgment of the gods and not on your hands."

Samara turned around, her eyes tired. For the first time, she actually looked her 846 years. "There will be no retaking her Thane. This time, the judgment of the Goddess cannot be delayed. She is beyond redemption in this life."

"Then I will pray for her, as I always have these long years," Thane replied, his nictitating membranes flicking over his eyes.

The hall shuddered, and Liara had to steady herself as dust and water dripped from above. Kolyat, Thane's son and her dedicated bodyguard, slipped beside her and slipped a rebreather mask on to her face.

"The whole city is collapsing. I have alerted the armed forces. We must get you out of here my Lady," Kolyat declared.

"There is no need. We can make our way to the evacuation tunnels unassisted," Liara declared.

Just then, the door to the containment facility shuddered and bent with a dull thud. It was made from the same material as starship armor was, designed to protect against all forms of radiation and heat, and reinforced to withstand tremendous water pressure. And it had bent.

"There must be a heavy weapons crew on the other side. Come my Lady, quickly," Kolyat urged.

Liara allowed herself to be lead down the hall, as another dull thud struck the door, and it let out a groan.

"Please tell me the walls are just as strong as the door," Liara begged, and to her relief Samara nodded.

"It would be foolish to make a door indestructible while the walls are easily destroyed."

There was another bang and a sound like metal grinding, and a howling roar echoed down the hallways.

"Then again, nothing but what the Goddess makes is truly indestructible," Samara amended.

"To the back door, quickly," Thane urged, and the party fled down the tunnel as the door continued to shudder and bend. They skidded to a halt when the reinforced back door also began to shudder.

"Trapped then. We should not have come," Kolyat sighed.

"Patience my son. Kalahira has not abandoned us yet." Raising a finger to his ear, Thane inquired, "Captain, how long until your arrival?"

"This one fears we shall be delayed," the somewhat strained voice replied. "Heavy enemy movement in your area. We are proceeding with all due haste. Estimated time of arrival, four minutes."

Behind Liara, there was a loud crash and bang, and a roar that sounded somehow satisfied. Both asari lit off their biotics together, the blue glow playing off the shattered perma-glass and water puddles on the floor. "We do not have four minutes."

Thane and Kolyat both drew their weapons and took up flanking positions beside the two asari. Thane and Kolyat both had biotics of their own and were powerful fighters, but they lacked the sheer force the asari possessed. Thane preferred ambush and surprise as an assassin, and Kolyat had followed in his father's footsteps. Liara wasn't much of a brawler, not like Samara, but somehow her Red Tide heavy pistol had found its way into her hand while she prepared to unleash a biotic tempest.

"Careful my child, together," Samara cautioned. "I will strike first, detonate my field as soon as you can."

Liara took a calming breath and nodded. "Of course."

Calm vanished as the thing rounded the corner. When Liara was young, she had snuck out with some friends to watch a holo at the theaters about an ancient monster that had been awakened on some out of the way colony. It had been eyeless, with only a mouth for crunching bones and long claws for grasping screaming asari a long while it had visited her dreams when she was younger, and she still found the holo frightening if she was honest with herself.

The thing that was raging forwards resembled the monster only in passing, but it was close enough to make Liara shudder. It had no eyes, only a gaping maw and a head covered with spikes and fangs. Instead of hands or claws, it had two long scythes that resembled butcher's cleavers. Its flesh hung from its body, fetid and rotting. Cables and metal plates covered the areas where the flesh had rotted away entirely, and darkness unnatural clung to the creature as it rushed forward, howling in rage.

If Samara was as taken aback, she did not show it. She let loose a biotic wave that crashed into the creature and made it stumble, though it did not lose its footing. As if waking from a dream, Liara let out a scream of her own and hurled a sphere of pure kinetic force with all her might at the thing. The two biotic field collided as the creatures left arm exploded into chunks of rotting flesh and metallic splinters.

But it did not fall. The creature righted itself and came on, still bellowing its fury. There was a sharp crack as Thane discharged his high caliber sniper rifle, and flame blossomed in a crater in the things chest. Kolyat's shotgun barked, and the hole expanded. Liara and Samara hurled more spheres, and the thing finally fell only centimeters from Liara's feet.

Behind it, two more creatures howled and charged forward, just as vile and monstrous as the first.

The four broke apart, scattering as the creatures crashed through already shattered walls, their massive bladed appendages whistling through the air where the defenders had stood only moments before. Liara fired away with her pistol as she tried to lock one down with a stasis to disable its nervous system, but the creature shrugged the attack off as if it had been a blow from a child.

"No more subtlety!" Liara snarled, and rushed the creature. As it swung its blades in a horizontal arch at her head and midsection, Liara vaulted over it with biotics, catching it in a field of zero gravity. The creature lost traction, but did not flail about like most would. It kept it's eyes on the prey, using its feet to flip itself and launch at Liara.

"Detonate!" Liara shouted, landing and turning about to maintain the field. A biotic flare, from whom she did not see, struck her field and the creature was tossed through the air by the shock of impact. Knowing it wasn't dead, Liara hit the thing as it lay with a warp to weak its armor, then fired repeatedly into the weakened area. Still, the creature rose and charged again, and Liara had to dodge both it and its companion, which was leaking fluid from a massive hole in one leg. Neither seemed slowed by their wounds.

"Grenade!" Kolyat yelled, tossing an entire bandoleer with biotic strength at one creature. Liara raised a barrier to protect herself. The combined detonation tore one of the creatures arms off, falling to the ground, where it twitched until Liara detonated her barrier in its face.

That left one last creature, which was in a duel with Samara. The ancient justicar was blocking blows from the things blades with her hands, creating miniature barriers around them. At first it seemed Samara was doing so purely out of defense, until one blade snapped off as it hit the barrier and the monster howled in rage. The barriers were warping the blades as they struck, and Samara used the opening to strike at the things chest with both hands, sending it back nearly a full meter.

From the shadows Thane appeared, leaping onto the things back and firing his rifle into the gaping maw three times in rapid succession, until his rifle's heat sinks screamed in protest and he was forced to disengage. The creature fell to the ground, dead at last. Within moments, the corpses began to rapidly decay. Now the first creature to fall was nearly gone.

"Reaped necrosis," Liara muttered, hurrying forward to get a closer look. She wanted to watch as the bodies rapidly decayed, perhaps to take a few samples. She was interrupted by another loud bang at the back door.

Strong hands griped Liara's arm and propelled her away. "Not now doctor," Kolyat said, his voice strained. "We still have to get out of this one alive."

**_Maximum Security Containment, Many Waters Meet - Morinth_**

Her mother and the others hurried away, that drell trash and his son, along with that bitch her mother seemed to have taken as a replacement for her. No matter. Morinth would continue hiding until all the excitement died down, then find a quiet place to slip off planet and get away from the bitch mother. If possible, she might even kill her mother and take that pureblood slut. She was strong, and taking asari felt so good. Not to mention that nice little power boost.

The hypocrisy of Morinth's internal thoughts went unremarked by herself. She was pureblood herself, the daughter of Samara and another asari. Unlike most purebloods, Morinth, and her younger sisters, had developed the genetic mutation that had caused asari to place such a stigma on interspecies relations. Ardat'yakshi; demon of the night winds. They were asari on the surface, but Morinth believed herself to be so much more than that. Instead of the pleasure the normal asari meld brought to its recipient, when an ardat'yakshi melded it killed the partner without fail. Taking all of the victim's life force into the ardat'yakshi was the true purpose of their melds. In ancient times, some ardat'yakshi had ruled as sorcerous queens, their biotics stronger than any other asari's, and growing stronger with each victim. They could live for nearly three times as long as a normal asari with regular feedings, and with that age came even greater power. Though she was young, Morinth was already stronger than Liara or even her mother, a matriarch of great power.

In her own mind, Morinth was the genetic and evolutionary next step of the asari, the glory of her people and their rightful ruler. In reality, ardat'yakshi were entirely sterile and a genetic dead end. The same mutation that made their meld kill and give them strength rendered them unable to reproduce, even with another asari. If another initiated and controlled the meld, it was just as deadly as if Morinth had. That was how she'd killed her guard. When he'd come for her, she'd used her powers to influence his mind, then had him, right then and there. In the confusion, it took nearly a minute for the other guards to notice. By then, it was too late. Morinth had gotten the powerboost, broken the inhibitors on her, then killed everyone. Some with force, others with melds. It had been delicious.

Now more of those beautiful creature flowed into the room. Morinth saw the grace and purpose in their design. Everything extraneous had been removed: they were pure killing machines, like her. She wondered what it would be like to meld with one.

Her revelry was broken by a grating word. "Asari."

It had gurgled out of the maw of one of the creatures, and it was now pointing a blade at her. That was impossible. Morinth had taken a stealth belt, and was invisible to both the eyes and electronic senses.

"Asari," the thing grated again.

Another creature, this one smaller, but like the other save for the fact that it had a real head and hands, came over towards Morinth, sniffing. Ah. That was how they had done it. A stealth belt could do a lot of things, but not hide your scent. She disabled the belt and stepped forward to caress the strange creature, reaching up to its massive height to do so.

"You've found me, love. I'm an asari. What are you going to do with me?"

"You...you must go to the herald," the thing managed, actually speaking accented Palavanese of all things. "He seeks you, asari. You and that prothean spirit. You will be his, and the Dark Gods as well."

"I must do nothing but what I will," Morinth purred. "And I am no ones." More of the things were gathering around, both the bladed ones and the lesser beings. She was going to die. But if she died, she was going to die as her victims had: in rapture. "Embrace ME!"

The rush of feeding filled her. It was better than all the drugs Morinth had ever tried put together. Better than all the concerts, better than all the wonders she had seen. It never lasted long enough though, and Morinth sighed as the body slumped to the floor. She expected to be drilled full of holes or ripped to shreds. Instead, the figures around her knelt.

"Forgive us, Dark Lady!" one of them growled in bad Palavanese. "We did not realize you were a priestess of the Dark Gods, blessed with their terrible power! We are but your servants. Our lives are yours. We beg you, let us take you to the Herald. He longs for you and the spirit you hold."

Morinth smiled.

_Authors note: _

_Happy new year! Some of you may notice that I haven't been as good as I was about answering reviews. Things have been busy as always over the holidays, and I will try to get back to you on future reviews. No promises though, but I do want to thank everyone for their support! It's excellent support from my readers that makes me want to keep this story going! As always, thanks for reading. _


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